Google file service failure a few users file exposure

On July 22, March 10, Google's reputation for protecting user privacy was hit in the last week. Google Docs users found that their online files were exposed to others last week.

 

The Google file service team told users last Friday that we found and fixed this security vulnerability. This vulnerability can expose user files without your knowledge. This accidental sharing only affects users who previously had shared files.

 

Google said the problem occurred when the file owner or collaborators with shared permissions selected multiple files and demo files from the file list and modified the shared permissions. This problem only affects a small number of users, exposes user files and demo files, but does not affect user form files.

 

Jennifer Mazzon, product manager of Google file service, said we believe this issue affects less than 0.05% of documents. However, for the sake of transparency, we will provide detailed information about this matter. This problem affects a small number of users, because it affects only a small number of files and can only occur when users take a series of specific operations.

 

However, Google admitted awkwardly that even some files of its employees were exposed. Google said that we understand the concerns of our users. In fact, we are also affected by this vulnerability. We are seriously solving this problem.

 

Google used an automatic process to delete the collaborators and viewers of the affected files it found, and then emailed the owner of the files, so that the owner of the file can re-determine the permissions for file sharing. Google said we have taken extensive protection measures to protect all files and believe this is an isolated event.