Google Rewards Student For Finding Problem in its Software

A student of Iowa's St. Ambrose University discovered a security problem in Google's new Web-based software. Google credited the student for his help and rewarded him. David Bloom, a resident of Bettendorf detected the problem in December last. Soon after Bloom alerted Google about it, the company rewarded him with a summer training job at its headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Bloom found the glitch on Google Docs, a word processor and spreadsheet, an excel program on the Web. This security hole could enable a hacker into extracting password and other account information from a user.

On December 3, 2006, Bloom e-mailed to Google about the flaw at 11.29 pm. Google sent a return e-mail at 11.56 pm to confirm that they would patch the flaw. Next day Bloom received another e-mail from Sam Schillace, co-developer of the Google Documents program offering Bloom a job.

On December 4 2006, Schillace wrote that he was concerned about Google's problems so he developed the product that would help to proactively deal with those issues. Since Bloom had an interest in this field, Schillace asked if he would like to join Google.

Schillace said he would forward Bloom's resume to place him on the attractive summer internship program. Every year Google uses services of nearly 600 interns. Half of them work at the California main office. Schillace said Bloom would be hired as one of the pair of interns who would work solely with Schillace. So, now Bloom is preparing to reach California for the summer internship. The internship will run during May 22, 2007 to August 14, 2004.

Schillace said on May 4, 2007 that they wanted people with a strong urge to improve the software quality. Journal and Courier reported this on May 4, 2007.

According to recent news, researchers at Exploit Prevention Labs, developer of security software discovered that cyber criminals were misusing Google Adwords to corrupt PCs of unwary surfers with malware. The crooks sent ads purporting to be for legitimate organizations like the Better Business Bureau but they actually redirected unsuspecting users to malicious sites. These sites installed exploits and other harmful codes.

Related article: Google Rectifies Gmail flaw in Three Days

» SPAMfighter News - 5/11/2007