Google Blog Slips Up. Again.

It’s strike two for the Google Blog.

Remember that slip-up that happened not very long ago, when the Google Blog team deleted its own blog by mistake, and someone was able to register the subdomain? That wasn’t actually a hacking incident, as first believed (and claimed by some people), since it was a simple act of registering an unregistered subdomain. But this time, it seems there is a security hole in Blogger, and the Google Blog had been compromised.

A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we’ve discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we’re pleased with the results thus far.

The erring post reads as follows:

Google Click-to-Call project cancelled

By Maximal

After concientiously considering, Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area.

This message has been translated using Google language tools.

What’s ironic about it all is that right before the hacked post, the Google Blog entry had been about Google’s stance on security.

Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security.

As Blogger users ourselves, we’re quite glad that the vulnerability has been discovered–and hopefully patched–but we’re still concerned about other vulnerabilities that might be taken advantage of by malicious hackers later on. It’s a good thing this incident simply involved a prank, and hopefully nothing malicious had been committed. But what if user data gets compromised? What if passwords get stolen? What if identities get revealed?

It’s a scary thought, and with this Google Blog slip-up, I just realized things like these could happen even to a company that can be considered to be leading in its field.