Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG): Colossal Webmaster Tools Security Breach Confirmed

Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG) Webmaster Tools helps owners of websites to manage how their site comes up in Google. It also helps in diagnosing problems and optimizing traffic. Unfortunately, the site is facing a grave security breach.

Search Engine Journal said that the issue is that old accounts are being verified again. This may not sound like a big deal, but it is a potential catastrophe for an individual, who has search engine optimizers working on their websites.

David Naylor has mentioned on his blog that apparently he had access to every old account that belonged to a previous clients or a site that had approached his company for some short-term consultancy.

It is being hoped that no black hats are exploiting special access to sites belonging to previous clients, as that could lead to considerable damage of uploading fake sitemaps, reconfiguring of the US-based websites to target internet users in Kazakhstan, requests for deletion of important URLs from Google’s index and setting up of Google’s rate of crawl at a absurdly slow pace.

A former SEO director at eBay, Dennis Goedegebuure confirmed to The Next Web that he had been given access to the webmaster tools of eBay. Although he had left the company nearly a year and half back.

The glitch goes to the extent of granting access to the Google Analytics of the websites too. At least, it is so in some cases. It goes without saying that the glitch is giving access to people to extremely sensitive information that sites and companies would not want former workers or consultants to see or share.

Google has not yet commented on the matter.

People, who are yet to realize the gravity of this apparent breach of security, contractors, ex-employees, people having access to a site at some point of time in the past, may probably gain access once again to Webmaster tools, and Google Analytics too.