[New York Times] Google Desktop Search: No match for Rice researchers

Rice University Computer Scientists Find a Flaw in Google's New Desktop Search Program

By JOHN MARKOFF
20 December 2004
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final 3
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 19 -- A Rice University computer scientist and two of his students have discovered a potentially serious security flaw in the desktop search tool for personal computers that was recently distributed by Google.

The glitch, which could permit an attacker to secretly search the contents of a personal computer via the Internet, is what computer scientists call a composition flaw -- a security weakness that emerges when separate components interact. ''When you put them together, out jumps a security flaw,'' said Dan Wallach, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice in Houston, who, with two graduate students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, discovered the flaw last month. ''These are subtle problems, and it takes a lot of experience to ferret out this kind of flaw,'' Professor Wallach said.

Google introduced a test version of the desktop search tool on Oct. 14, and it can be downloaded at no cost. The program indexes material on a user's local hard disk and then blends Web search results with local user information like electronic mail, text documents and other files. The flaw would permit a search to reveal only small portions of the files.

The way the software tool is designed, a user's queries, but no locally stored information, is distributed via the Internet. But by reading user queries sent to its search service, Google is able to place its AdWords text advertisements next to the search results displayed in a user's browser window.

In a statement over the weekend, the company said that it had been notified of the flaw by the computer researchers in late November and had begun distributing a new version of the desktop search engine that repairs the potential security hole. Google's introduction of a desktop search tool has touched off a competition with its closest Web search service competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft made a test version of its desktop search tool available last Monday as part of its MSN toolbar suite, and Yahoo has said that it will begin testing a similar search tool in January.

The Rice University researchers said that they had not yet examined Microsoft's desktop search program, but noted that the service did not appear to integrate Web and local search results in the same manner as the Google tool.

The researchers said that the Google security weakness lay in the way that Google Desktop was designed to intercept outgoing network connections from the user's computer.

The program looks for traffic that appears to be going to Google.com and then inserts results from a user's hard disk for a particular search. They found that it was possible to trick the Google desktop search program into inserting those results into other Web pages where an attacker could read them.

An attack would require a user to visit the attacker's Web site first, and any type of Web browser could make a user vulnerable. Google said there was no evidence that any such attacks had occurred.

The Rice group was able to create a Java program that makes network connections back to the computer from where it was downloaded and then make it appear as if it were asking for a search at Google.com. That was enough to fool the Google desktop software into providing the user's search information. The program was able to do anything with the results, including transmitting them back to the attacking site.

''This began as a student project to study how Google Desktop worked and to see if there were any security flaws,'' said Professor Wallach. ''We started by wondering how Google did the local search integration. Once we figured out how it worked, it wasn't too much extra work to break it.''

The researchers said that Google had responded quickly to their alert last month and had begun releasing a corrected version of the program on Dec. 10.

The Google desktop program includes an update feature that permits the company to automatically install new versions of the program on users' computers without user intervention or knowledge.

The Rice researchers said that it was possible for users to tell if their version of the Google program had been patched by examining the ''about'' page from the Google Desktop icon in the browser task bar. Version numbers above 121,004 indicate a newer edition of the program.

www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/technology/20flaw.html?oref=login

 

Not funny, not original, and just plain stupid. The word "penis" was funny in junior high, though, I'll give you that.

If it puts your mind at ease, I will assure you that I get laid plenty, my friend.

 

Because it had nothing to do with the original post, it insulted Rice graduates (small penis?? - did you see that part, Jeff?), and it was just plain stupid, like I said.