During Defcon a new tool was mentioned that would automate the hacking of GMail accounts. This only applies that those of you using GMail, not the Google Hosted Apps.
The problem is in how GMail encrypts traffic. It only does SSL encryption during the login session. As described here and here, this leaves your actual email unencrypted and a door for someone to get into your account later.
The simple fix is to go into your account Settings, scroll to the bottom, select “Always Use HTTPS” and click save changes. This will cause your entire session with GMail to be encyrpted and mitigate the risk of your account being hijacked. Combine this with Perspectives and you have a pretty solid security setup.
Gmail, Google, Security, SSL, Vulnerability
I have been using Google Hosted apps for my mail domain for over 2 years now and I couldn’t be happier with the service. It is always available and quite frankly keeps getting better. Now Google had an email outage yesterday and at latest count, there are over 125 news articles about it along with COUNTLESS complaints.
It befuddles me to think that someone has the rights to bitch about GMail being down for two hours. A service that most and by most, I mean high 90s percentage do not pay for. It may even be 99% don’t pay for. How can you complain about a service that offers soo much for free when it goes down for 2 hours or less? Is your life/business/etc so critical that you can’t not be with out email for two hours? Best of all, it was only the web interface that was down for two hours. You could STILL access it by POP or IMAP.
So I have to ask again, WTF are you complaining about? If your business relies on a FREE BETA application that much that two hours will have a significant impact to you, then you seriously need to reconsider your IT strategy. It is no one’s falt but your own if you go out of business for, again with emphasis this time, RELIYING ON A FREE BETA APPLICATION for business critical services. Period.
I don’t care who you are, what you do, how you do, how much money you make, or who you fuck. You are frankly an idiot if this makes you mad or damages your business. And you can quote me on that.
Beta, Gmail, Google, Outage, Problems