Spotted a depressing article on Techmeme on Friday – Hackers turn Google into a vulnerability scanner (Infoworld). I suppose it was inevitable that this would happen.
Hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) have kindly released a tool that uses Google to automatically scour web sites for sensitive information. Because it is automatic, it means that new and novice web sites are no longer protected by relative anonymity. If you are storing information anywhere in ‘the cloud’ and are worried about it being kept private and secure, the best approach is to run the tool for yourself and find out if your site needs fixing.
Whether Google likes it or not, they are as good as a monopoly on the Internet. There isn’t the proprietary lock-in achieved by a certain other technology company. But Google is the one location that most* people go to in search of stuff and therefore the one location most web sites aim to be discovered by. The trouble with technology monopolies is the lack of diversity. It’s what makes Microsoft software so vulnerable. Give a cold to one computer and you can pass it on to them all. Now the Internet is the focus and Google is the target to exploit. The CDC tool doesn’t care if your web site is on page 1 or page 1,000,001 of Google’s search results. It can and will find you (cue Terminator music).
The ultimate irony – the tool takes advantage of Google’s index, has been written using Microsoft .NET and is licensed as free open source… it’s not often you see those three areas come together as a single solution. Pity it had to be this one.
*According to comScore World Metrix, Google hosted 62.4% of web searches in December 2007. Next nearest rival was Yahoo with 12.8%, trailed by Microsoft with 2.9%
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