New Security Concerns Raised For Google Docs

TechCrunch is running a story about three possible security issues with Google Docs recently uncovered by researcher Ade Barkah. It turns out that an image embedded into a protected document is given a URL which is not protected, allowing anyone who knows or guesses it to see the image regardless of permissions or even the existence of the document. Barkah also pointed out that once you've shared a document with another person, that person can see diagram revisions from any point before they gained access, forcing you to create a new document if you need to redact something. The last issue, the mechanics of which he disclosed only to Google, affects the document-sharing invitation forwarding system, which can allow somebody access to your documents after you've removed their permissions. Google made a blog post to respond to these concerns, saying that they "do not pose a significant security risk," but are being investigated. We previously discussed a sharing bug in Google Docs that was fixed earlier this month.

Comments

Re:It's nothing, Shroedinger's logarithm beats tha

[TheRealMindChild]

While I agree, this is a bug, I think underneath it is the 60 year old "representing floats in binary" issue. Chances are, underneath, log10(1000) ends up being 2.999999999999999, but with some workarounds/fixes that translate the result to 3.00. But in the case of trunc(log10(1000)), trunc is operating on 2.999999999999 before said workaround/fix kicks in, so it ends up being 2.00.

Of course, this is just speculation.

Google's own position on this

[adrianmsmith]

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/just-to-clarify.html