Google Storing WLAN Passwords In the Clear

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."

Comments

Too much trust

[Linux User 33]

I think this is perfect example again that we put too much trust on Google. They have repeatly broken that trust and yet some people continue to trust them. This data also goes directly to NSA and FBI. I think both FCC and European Commission should hit them hard, upto jailing the top executives.

This is why I turned off backup

[DigitAl56K]

I turned off Backup on Android after discovering this. They're going to have to store them in the clear (or I guess reversible), so that the "backup" is reversible - i.e. you recover your backup or add a new phone to your account and it "just works" with your wifi.

However, there's no in-between. I can't choose to backup certain things but exclude very sensitive things, like my wifi password and other credentials. Given what we know about government snooping and the constant notices of breached databases these days, I just don't want to use the backup feature at all, and anyone who does is taking a bit of a gamble IMO.

Can't we have a sub-option to "also include credentials", at the very least?

Re:This is why I turned off backup

[gstoddart]

I turned off Backup on Android after discovering this.

I turned it off before I ever knew this, because I'm increasingly finding that I don't trust Google -- either in intent or execution.

All they want to do is collect all of your information and use it to sell advertising, they don't give a damn about your privacy.

And that stupid Google+ might be the last straw since everything is trying to foist it on me and I have no interest in it.

But, I gotta ask ... if we don't trust Microsoft and Google, who is left?

Re:This is why I turned off backup

[DigitAl56K]

But, I gotta ask ... if we don't trust Microsoft and Google, who is left?

I am fine with trusting Microsoft and Google, and indeed anyone with a reliable infrastructure, to provide a backup hosting service that significantly improves the experience with my phone in the event of a disaster. I'm just not fine with entrusting them with access to the contents of those backups, especially when I may not even be aware of or have granular control over what is in them.

A backup passphrase that only I know, and restricting processing to the client-side, would be sufficient to achieve this.

Have an untrusted network

[PvtVoid]

This kind of shit is exactly why, as soon as I got an Android smartphone, I also installed a second wireless router, with its own encryption password, outside my firewall. Anybody who wasn't already assuming that smartphones and tablets are anything other than hostile network actors is an idiot.

Encryption is no panacea

[Arker]

Here's the thing. Even if you encrypt the data before giving it to them, and dont keep the key (which is much harder to do than to say) so what? Do you really think any encryption algorithm you are going to use today will stand up to the tools available to script-kiddies in 5 or 10 years? You do understand that once you put something 'in the cloud' it's probably never going away, right?