Google, Streetview and Espionage

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Posted by arsen

10th June 2010

1 comments

News Tags; wireless, sniffing, wifi, streetview, google
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So as you may have heard Google has been wondering around our neighbourhoods stealin' our wifi'z. Yes, not only have they been collecting pictures of our children.. .. playing in the street, but also pictures of our living room windows and sneakily on the side.. collecting some data floating over the airwaves.

Whatever your opinion of their actions - there are currently numerous challenges to their behaviour ongoing across various european courts, with the main fight it seems currently sat in the German ballpark.

The long story short is that Google attached a wireless device to their Streetview vehicles, probing for SSID broadcasts and also, controversially, storing the data picked up as they drive around. They've used gstumbler to do this, which is based on the popular Kismet, often used for wireless cracking, or "penetration testing" the white-hat guys like to call it.

Due to the huge public outcry against this, google requested an independent investigation into their software used to deem if they had been involved in any mischievous actions. This full article, written by Stroz Friedberg LLC (A cybercrime and forensic investigation company - not an extra in the Tron films).

Personally i think that if people leave their wireless exposed to the public eye, it is their fault for allowing google to do this. However, it does beg the question as to why Google decided this was something they needed to collect, nevermind interface with Streetview/GPS in order to GPS location tag and locate each unsecured wireless network. Though it would be a nice perk for Google's employees to be able to wonder the streets of any city and gain free roaming wireless!

The full Stroz Friedberg findings report can be found here

Remember kids - always encrypt and lock down your wireless!

Comments

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google is our new masters and overlords what they decide is in our best interest at heart seeing as were the consumer and they need us. Give it ten years and let em buy a country aye there just LTD companys like everything else and very open to purchase and we will not be worrying so much about there secret actions. Google is a super power in building and unless we decide wether or not we want the world run by politicians or buisness men there is little time left to decide. Many ppl made moves against microsoft and again with google but there growth rate is surreal.

Piratheseus posted this about 3 months ago

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