My inbox is full this morning from people telling me their is a bad security bug with the Google Webaccelrator. I have yet to fully confirm this but here is one of the reports.
Reader Submission
GWA’s main issue at the moment is the giant gaping security hole it opens on your system. It’s much easier to show you than to tell you
check out the forum discussion at: forums.somethingawful.com
Say, for example, you go to a site that Google doesn’t have in its cache, such as an online forum. It appears that Google then caches that site. Problem? Now, when others go to that site, they see the page — as if you were logged in. From other forums appears that Google is even caching https pages. Would Google cache your Discover Card online account page? I don’t think I’ll be installing this program to find out.
I’ve used this software for two days and have only saved 36.5 seconds. Seems like a total waste of resources to even have it running. I heard about this error yesterday and figured I’d give it a try – none of the forums I could think of had this error. I’m not sure how widespread this issue really is.
The one thing that could be castraphic is the moment a hacker figures out to get into Google’s anonymous server farm. Yea, access to those cache’d pages would be any hacker’s dream. You wouldn’t even have to hack someone’s computer to see the websites they have looked at, the information they typed in.
Google Accelerator: The Wrath of the Plex
Uh oh! Serious issues are starting to appear with the Google Accelerator, including security/authentication issues.
More here and here and here
C|Net’s take.
geeked’s take.
Geek News Central