Google products and services have become essential components of many people's everyday life, from workspace to businesses to enterprises. However, such ubiquity comes at a price, and it gets more evident from the recent cyberattacks on Google services.
What hackers are doing?
A malicious Chrome extension was found abusing the Google Chrome sync feature in the wild for C&C and data exfiltration.
- An invoice-themed email attack that pretended to be hosted on Google Firebase was observed tricking victims into entering their Microsoft credentials on a phishing page.
- Last month, cybercriminals and pirates were using Google Drive to store and share illegal software licenses, movies, games, and pornographic content.
- Threat actors were using Google Forms to evade ingress and egress email filters in several targeted BEC campaigns.
- The Chimera hacking group was abusing Google and Microsoft cloud services, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive to fly under the radar.
- Rogue malware operators had adopted the services of the Firebase platform to disguise their malicious intentions and masquerade as a legitimate Google service.
While multiple attacks kept exploiting Google products, a few vulnerabilities also gripped the tech giant posing risk first to its devices and hence to the users.
Critical vulnerabilities found in Google
In recent times, several severe vulnerabilities have been identified in Google products and services, which can give hackers an ace in the hole.
- A few weeks ago, DNSpooq vulnerabilities (tracked as CVE-2020-25686, CVE-2020-25684, etc.) were identified in Google products, which could let attackers hijack DNS on millions of affected devices.
- Around the same time, a vulnerability (CVE-2021-3011) was found impacting chips used inside Google Titan and YubiKey hardware security keys. It could have led to side-channel attacks.
Conclusion
Threats to Google products and services have seen a surge in the past few years with hackers launching a myriad of campaigns with effective attack tactics. While users need to be cautious and self-aware not to fall for bogus campaigns, security experts advise keeping abreast with update notifications coming from device manufacturers.
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