Google Drive security update: What is it and what do I need to do?
Google Drive security update: What is information technology and what do I need to do?
If you're a Google Bulldoze user, you may have received an electronic mail in the past couple of days with the field of study line "Security update for Bulldoze." Or yous may accept seen a banner across the top of a Google Drive folio stating: "On September thirteen, 2021, a security update will be applied to some of your files. Larn more."
And so what is this change, how does it affect you lot, and what do you have to practice? Google's ain support post near the "security update" for Google Drive isn't terribly articulate, unfortunately.
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The adept news is that you don't need to do much. First of all, "Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms aren't impacted past this security update," a rather important detail that Google cached in the subconscious-respond FAQ department of its support notice.
2nd, the "security update" (and nosotros'll get into the reasons for the quotation marks below) has already been applied to your Google Drive files. If that's fine with you, and then you don't need to practise annihilation at all.
We, like Google, recommend that you let the "security update" happen, and nosotros'd like you to read on and then that we can explain why. But we realize y'all're pressed for time, so here's what you may need to do.
How to roll back the Google Drive security update
If you take older shared files on your Google Drive that you're totally cool with anyone seeing, and would like anyone to be able to access in the time to come without having to issues you for permission, and then yous may want to remove the Google Drive security update for those specific files.
ane. Head over to https://drive.google.com/drive/my-bulldoze . (Information technology's probably best to do this on a desktop or laptop.) You'll see a long listing of all your Google Bulldoze files to which this "security update" has been applied.
2. Go through the list (it can be sorted alphabetically, past cosmos appointment or past final-modification date) to pick out each file that you don't desire the "security update" applied to.
3. Hover your mouse over each of those files and click the link stating "Remove security update" that appears on the right.
iv. A dialogue box volition pop up asking you to confirm your choice. Click Remove in the box and move on to the next file.
Once you've washed this to all the files you demand to, you lot're washed. You lot can go back and do this once again to whatever file yous'd like, or reapply the security update to files from which you had removed it, even after Sept. 13.
Why Google is applying this update to Google Drive
We have to thank Ron Amadeo over at Ars Technica for this next part, because Google doesn't explain it well.
Basically, Google Bulldoze lets you share files 2 unlike ways: with specific Google Bulldoze users whom you designate, and with anyone who has the link.
The commencement blazon of file sharing works lets simply those specific individuals with whom you lot've shared the file AND who are logged into their Google accounts run into the file. Those individuals volition become an e-mail telling them yous've shared the file, and will get a link to that file that simply they can employ.
The second type lets anyone with the link, or URL of the file, admission the file whether or not they're signed into Google, or take a Google account at all. It's up to the file owner to decide whether to mail service that link on a website or on social media to make it truly public, or to requite the link to only a few people to keep it semi-private.
The upshot, nonetheless, is that anyone can access a file using the 2nd blazon of link, and anyone can likewise resend that link to random other people whom the file owner may non know. (There's a 3rd kind of sharing for enterprise Google deployments that restricts one-to-many file sharing to specific company domains.)
A long string of gibberish that'south meant to be hard to guess
In all cases, the link to the Google Drive file is something that looks like:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/OUejYjuQOAc_9wk5aGLdi5v9Tqu_QXhlR/view?usp=sharing (Not a real file link.)
Now, this second kind of file isn't really protected. All you need is the sharing-link URL to access information technology. Just Google uses that long cord of alphanumeric gobbledygook above to make the URL completely random so that no ane can gear up a computer script to brute-strength or guess the URLs and admission shared files en masse.
That'due south an example of what experts call "security past obscurity." It's non hard to access the file — information technology's just difficult to find the file.
Well, that level of obscurity no longer seems to be good enough. (Amadeo points to a 2020 blog post detailing the risks of shared-file links in general, simply the post doesn't specifically explain how Google Bulldoze links are risky.)
What Google is doing with this "security update" is not updating the security, only just making the publicly shared files fifty-fifty harder to find. It's adding some other string of 24 random characters called a "resources key" to the end of existing shared links.
The fake example to a higher place will then await like this:
https://bulldoze.google.com/file/d/OUejYjuQOAc_9wk5aGLdi5v9Tqu_QXhlR/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=p4x5BkgU-qE5JtHIaFrT_eXJ Why Google is doing this, we don't quite yet know. Mayhap Google Drive links are indeed guessable in some way.
Perhaps computers have avant-garde to the point where they can cleft a random string of 28 to 33 characters. (Some newer links in our Google Drive folder have 49 random characters, plus the 24-grapheme resource key.)
Perhaps at that place are just besides many Google Drive file links floating around in public that were meant to be semi-individual.
What this ways for your and your Google Drive files
Merely in whatever case, the add-on of the resource key is establishing a "time wall" that goes up Sept. 13.
After that appointment, anyone who stumbles across an old link, without the resource key, to an sometime Google Drive shared-with-anyone file then tries to access the file for the first time will be blocked. No go.
Instead, those first-fourth dimension accessors will have to asking access from the file owner to view the file, and the file owner tin can send them a new link with the resources key attached — kind of the same manner that truly private files are shared between Google Drive users.
In Google'southward own words: "You'll need to transport collaborators the new, updated link that includes the resources key for your files, so they can gain access one time the security update is practical. Practice not remove the resourcekey parameter when passing the link to others."
This new update isn't really making these files private, all the same. Anyone who has already accessed a "shared-with-anyone" file earlier Sept. thirteen will still exist able to admission it after Sept. 13. Only new people trying to access it for the offset time after Sept. thirteen volition need to request access.
Meanwhile, shared-with-anyone file links created after Sept. 13 will make those files accessible to anyone who has the link, because the new links under this new format will include the resources central.
Google is just cartoon a big fat red line between shared-file links created before Sept. 13, and shared-file links created after that date. Nosotros have a feeling it won't be the last fourth dimension.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-drive-security-update-what-is-it
Posted by: deguzmanhatly1954.blogspot.com
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