Google Accidentally Shared Private Videos of Some Users With Others

Feb 4, 2020

Google might have mistakenly shared your private videos saved
on the company’s servers with other users, the tech giant admitted
yesterday in a security notification sent quietly to an undisclosed
number of affected users.

The latest privacy mishap is the result of a “technical issue”
in Google’s Takeout, a service that backs up all your Google
account data into a single file and then lets you download it
straight away.

According to a screenshot Jon Oberheide of Duo Security shared on
Twitter, the issue reportedly remained active between 21st November
and 25th November last year, during which “some videos in Google
Photos [service] were incorrectly exported to unrelated user’s
archives.”

Vice versa, if you had also requested for your account backup
during the same 5-day period, you might have even received
unrelated videos from other Google accounts.

So, the data leak incident potentially affects only those who used
Google Takeout service in late November last year and doesn’t
involve photographs you uploaded to Google Photos.

However, the extent of the bug remains unclear, as Google
roughly saying “one or more videos in your Google Photos account
was affected by this issue.”

The search engine giant also apologized for the glitch and
confirmed that it has identified the issue and resolved it.

^[1]

References

^{^}
shared
(twitter.com)

The Hacker News Headlines

New Apple iOS 16 Exploit Enables Stealthy Cellular Access Under Fake Airplane Mode

Aug 18, 2023

The Hacker News Headlines

China-Linked Bronze Starlight Group Targeting Gambling Sector with Cobalt Strike Beacons

Aug 18, 2023

The Hacker News Headlines

NoFilter Attack: Sneaky Privilege Escalation Method Bypasses Windows Security

Aug 18, 2023

OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Google Accidentally Shared Private Videos of Some Users With Others

References

Related Post

New Apple iOS 16 Exploit Enables Stealthy Cellular Access Under Fake Airplane Mode

China-Linked Bronze Starlight Group Targeting Gambling Sector with Cobalt Strike Beacons

NoFilter Attack: Sneaky Privilege Escalation Method Bypasses Windows Security

You missed

Protected: Rotary VI EAST

Protected: BetterCyberCareer Group

Protected: Benin Club 1931 – Official

Protected: Whatsapp AI Automation Group