Hacking, all you need is Google - and for people to be stupid
I couldn't help but notice over someone's shoulder yesterday morning that Metro, the free newspaper distributed on London's Underground trains had a story along the lines of "Hacking, all you need is Google"
It was a re-write of this New Scientist article - Hackers turn to Google to find weakest links - by Celeste Biever.
Now the Metro article even went a little way into explaining how search engines spider, but then went on to say that the problem arose if search engines followed "hidden or secret links". A link is a link, and if a search engine can find it, then a human can, either by using a page or looking at the code.
And what is this miracle data that Google is making available? People publishing to the web their passwords, their usernames, and their software serial numbers. The fundamental issue that needs addressing here with regard to internet security is not the way search engines follow links, or the way that Google caches pages. It is about educating people to not put up these kinds of details on servers available to the public.
Search engines don't make hacking easier. People making insecure websites makes hacking easy.
...but it did kind of make me wonder how many news articles about "technical" fields - or non-technical for that matter - are based on a complete misunderstanding of the point
Posted by Martin Belam, August 1, 2003
Read more posts on currybetdotnet about: Google, Newspapers
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About Martin Belam
I'm a London-based internet consultant and writer, with 8 years experience in product management, information architecture, and user experience design for global brands like Sony, Vodafone, The Guardian and the BBC. I specialise in advising on search, widgets, RSS, online news publishing and bulk email delivery.
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2 comments so far
I don't think it's based on a misunderstanding of the point at all - I think they have decided to make a story out of a non-story because telling their readers that they're stupid doesn't sell papers, while telling people that Google is a threat to their business does. It's less stupid and more unethical...
Tom,
Not to be too gawd awful picky buuuut...read the article again..it is a free newspaper.
And while the gist of the story talks about google and hackers, it's more about protecting your company from idiotic webmasters and the like than the hackers or google. It's only idiots who can't read between the lines and see that's the real story.
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Social Engineering is a real threat to your company's confidential information.