The integrity of an online account is determined by the strength of its password. If you were to use passwords like “123456”, it wouldn’t even need a hacker to figure it out. Of course, not only do passwords need to be secure but the method of storing them as well. After all, if a company does not secure its password storage, anyone with access will have no problems reading it.
You would think that a huge company such as Google have taken measures to protect the passwords of its users, but unfortunately, that was not the case. According to Google, they have disclosed that some of the passwords for G Suite customers were accidentally stored in plain text format, meaning that you wouldn’t even need a special tool to read them.
What made this problem even worse was the fact that it occurred back in 2005, and that it was only in January 2019 that the company figured it out. However, despite being stored in plain text format, Google notes that they were still kept behind an encrypted infrastructure, meaning that they were still somewhat secure (although it does suggest that whoever could get behind the encryption could read it).
Google also notes that the problem has since been fixed and that they are not seeing any evidence or signs that there was improper access or misuse of the passwords that were affected. To be safe, Google has notified G Suite administrators and advising them to change their passwords. This is not the first time that a company has left passwords unsecured. Previously, it was reported that Facebook had also stored millions of Instagram passwords in plain text.
Filed in . Read more about Google and Security. Source: cloud.google