Watch Your Google Gadgets
Ever use iGoogle? I do and I love it. It’s as close as you can get to a personalized home page without having to know web code. However, the platform is about to be rocked by a presentation this week at Black Hat, the annual hacker conference.
According to Yahoo News, Cenzic senior security analyst Tom Stracener and security researcher Robert Hansen, better known as “RSnake,” plan to demonstrate a zero-day vulnerability that affects Google Gadgets. What this means is that they are going to announce that knowledgeable web coders will be able to inject malware into your PC, possibly beyond the realm of traditional detection with antivirus and malware protection.
So if you’re an “iGoogle-Google-Gadget-User” what do you do?
- The first thing is to educate your users about the dangers of installing unknown software. This is a good practice no matter what.
- Watch what comes out of BlackHat 2008. Follow the mainstream IT Security bloggers as they summarize the presentations. I’ll post more on this as it gets closer.
- If in your opinion the risk of iGoogle malware outweights the benefits, use your webfilter to block it. Or block the installation of Google Gadgets. You can still get all the benefits of Google.
Tags: google, it security, malware