Google Storing WLAN Passwords In the Clear

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 18, 2013 @05:35AM from the memory-tricks dept.

First time accepted submitter husemann writes "Micah Lee from the EFF filed a bug report about Google storing all your WLAN passwords on their application settings backup service without allowing you to encrypt them. So far it's not known whether the passwords are stored encrypted at rest, but just the fact that Google can read them (and disclose them if forced by 'law') is a bit surprising, too put it nicely. Already one German university is concerned enough about this 'feature' that they issued a warning to their users."

1 of 242 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Situation may not be as it appears by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · 2013-07-18 06:25 · Score: 5, Informative

Looking at the comments in the first link in the original post is useful. One comment says that the only thing the panicked bug reporter knows is that the WLAN password was retrieved in the clear, but it could be that this information actually is encrypted but the retrieval decrypted it. In other words, things may not necessarily be as the original post and the bug reporter suggest. There is a chance that things are exactly as bad as suggested though. At this point only Google can say for sure how it is.