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Google Solves Sharing Bug In Google Docs
RichardDeVries writes "Three weeks ago, I contacted Google about a bug in Google Docs that shared documents without permission. The issue has been resolved and affected documents have had their collaborators removed. The documents' owners have been notified: 'To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually.' See my journal entry for details on my contact with Google. Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google's eternal beta-status for a lot of their services."
Prime reason to avoid online office suites and the like. Another good reason is that even these days Internet access is not a given 24x7 every place you want to be.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It seems Google treats their beta products better than most treat their production stuff. Fitting, considering Google has more users of their beta stuff than other companies have paying users.
It raises more immediate questions about SAAS, which Google docs is, not cloud computing. (Google docs is software as a service, not a cloud computing service like Amazon ec2.) Someone else's custom app can have a bug, and leak your data.
So can your provider's closed-source proprietary cloud computing applications, user provisioning, storage, etc.
If, however, the provider uses an open-source hypervisor (like KVM), and open-source provisioning, management tools, and scripts (so the wrong user isn't given access to your storage), cloud computing should be much more secure than a SAAS platform like Google docs.
But yes, it does raise some question about services like ec2, because they're fairly opaque and using proprietary software, how can you possibly prove that their provisioning system is secure (in that YOUR elastic block store can't accidentally be provisioned onto someone else's ec instance)?
One possibility is to use full-drive encryption on all your volumes, and require interaction with custom software on your side to boot your instances.
Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google's eternal beta-status for a lot of their services.
Really? I don't use Google Apps but I don't think the act of fixing a bug in any way raises questions about the overall concept any more than Microsoft fixing a bug in Sharepoint would raise questions about closed source Windows services, or fixing a bug in KnowledgeTree would raise questions about similar open source services.
Software application has bug; bug gets fixed. Jesus people, why is this different from any other similar bug being fixed? Oh, it's Google, better get blogging.. Gotta get those ad impressions up.
When there's a bug in my internal doc collab and versioning service, it isn't exposed to the entire world.
I think that's the question raised.
My god, every time someone comes up with a solution in IT, we have this built in expectation that everyone should fall on board. Cloud computing is just the latest. Are we to now upgrade every system to use the "cloud". Are we to do web applications for everything? This isn't an engineering profession, its a fashion one. We're not like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. We're like the guy on America's Next Fashion Designer.
This is my sig.
Not trying to jump to Google's side, but just want to consider other aspects...
From TFA's readers comments:
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"Richard de Vries" (submitter of this Slashdot story) - March 7th, 2009 at 2:04 am PST
It's legit alright. I reported this issue to Google on February 24th. Last Thurday I was notified it had been fixed.
I knew this would cause a few discussions about cloud computing and the beta-status of most of Google's applications. I work for a small company. We use Google Docs a lot and we unintentionally shared some internal documents with a few clients. None of these were ultrasecret and the issue was quickly discovered, but you can imagine what could go wrong.
I can say, however, that I'm very happy with the way Google handled this. The e-mails were polite and helpful, the issue was resolved fairly quickly and they have gone out of their way to correct erroneous shares and they sent e-mails to all affected users. They knew they would get reactions like this article, but they did the right thing.
Regards,
Richard
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"Alyx Flannery" - March 7th, 2009 at 1:33 am PST:
Please. Let's see how many millions of documents were shared.. oh wait, there weren't. Unlike all the recent Credit Card compromises we have heard about. And those would be from not what we would consider "super-naive" companies. This is FUD plain and simple.
But perspective folks, this isn't the sky falling. A poorly configured server exposed to the Internet will give more info away and is a larger threat due to bots and zombies.
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"Musashi" - March 7th, 2009 at 3:07 am PST
Cloud Computing Questions:
1. Who owns the data/documents/content?
2. How much access do the data custodians have to your data?
3. How much access SHOULD they have?
4. During an outage, what, if any, recourse do you have to continue doing business with your various collaborators?
5. How secure is your data in the cloud? How patched is the cloud environment? How well monitored is it for violations?
6. Just how interconnected are the various Google sites? Calendar, mail, Docs etc.
I only use Google docs for convenience of sharing a few minor docs. Until I get satisfactory answers to the above questions, nothing business critical or remotely private will be going up.
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"Musashi" - March 7th, 2009 at 4:21 am PST
Classified business files being shared between business partners over in the cloud can be extremely valuable - especially to a competitor!
Just imagine you're discussing a new product (a new killer app, or product) amongst your colleagues before you've patented the idea and that leaks out (without their knowledge); I'm sure you'll be more worried about that.
Many small businesses are using the cloud (Google or others) to do just that. Their Intellectual Property is extremely valuable to them.
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"Jean Vincent" - March 7th, 2009 at 9:42 am PST
Sharing information on the web will always have some limitations, but the risk of sharing data without our knowledge can happen with any digital device, including personal computers or companies servers.
Small businesses need to make the choice by assessing their abilities to secure their documents better than Google or other online services.
I think that in that specific case Google could have handled the matter faster and should also have responded to the email from Andy. The final response seems appropriate, they have fixed the problem and notified users.
I also agree that the Beta-forever practice that Google has pioneered is not responsible and undermines users' rights on the web.
Finally there is a lot of confusion in this article and others between the term 'Cloud Computing' and 'Online services'. Cloud Computing is a deployment technology for service developers competing with web hosting, ded
Yeah, like people never accidentally share secret documents from their desktop machines.
I'd say the security for SAAS is still probably better than most company/home built installations out there.
I mean, is the HR finances spreadsheet really more secure on the file server for most businesses out there? I doubt it.
At least with Cloud Computing the patches are automatically rolled out to everyone. No "this server hasn't been patched in 2 years because of X, Y, Z" issues.
Well let's say that you're using SharePoint internally, and there's a bug in it. It's not exposed to the entire world, but it IS exposed to the entire organization (which can be just as bad, depending on the bug). More importantly, it's on a hundred thousand different sysadmins to patch said bug on their own MOSS installations, rather than a SAAS company patching it once and having the bug fixed for everyone.
Imagine for a moment if IE was somehow SAAS instead of a desktop app. That would mean that IE6 would NO LONGER EXIST, and that everyone would have an up-to-date version of IE7. And as soon as IE8 comes out of beta, IE7 will also die - instantly, worldwide - and then web developers everywhere will rejoice.
Obviously that simply doesn't work for a web browser (well, it could, but not as it's done now - and it's obviously not the most practical approach), but for all of the problems that SAAS can bring, it also solves a tremendous number of other issues. For something where security is priority number one, it's often not the best choice, but you can't beat it for keeping things up to date. And when you're dealing with closed-source software, that's already beyond your control so you might as well reap the benefits of the instant updates.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
are on a laptop I have owned since 1989 (NEC UltraLite), before government wised up to the need for back doors, which I use (with only original software) through a glove-box I built of seven layers of alternative seran-wrap and aluminum foil and which I view through a pinhole. It is run off a car batteries, also electromagnetically isolated from the outside world, which I wired in parallel and that I remove and charge (from my actual car) about three times per year. Mostly I just use it to keep track of my charging scheduling though.
Similar bug is in FB. Grant an app perms; delete some friends, the app still has write perms on you when your delteted friends do something. As a programmer I'm making a wild guess it's grabbing your friends list when you sign up, not when you run it.
I suppose it's more of a "practices" thing than a "bug in facebook". But envision some scenario with, uh, you can figure it out.
Need Mercedes parts ?
More work I know, but more control if you implement it properly.
I seriously doubt you're going to get your average user to use FTP successfully and I doubt most companies could "implement it properly".
What Google offers instead:
Jane goes to http://docs.mycompany.com, creates the document. Clicks on sharing and shares it with Bob in accounting. Simple and easy.
Is this solution open to bugs in Google Docs? Sure is. But your web/ftp server solution is also open to exploits in both pieces of software AND since it's more complex it's more open to user error.
How does Jane upload it so only Bob and not Bill in accounting can edit it? How does she make it so only Mark, Matt and Jessie in development can view it?
Google Docs makes that trivial to do. Also Bob and Jane can work on the document at the same time and any changes go out instantly to the viewers. Plus the document has versioning built in.