Google Images: What Is in Focus? Images or Security? Neither? Both?
May 10, 2011
This weekend (May 7 and 8, 2011), I wanted a US government picture of earth taken from space. I checked out Bing.com but did not spot the image I had in mind. I bopped over to Google.com, clicked on Images, and checked out some snaps. One caught my eye and I clicked it. The Google iFrame thing popped up. I clicked the image, saved a copy to a USB, hit the button on my KVM control, and worked some Photoshop / Gimp distortions. When I clicked back to the machine I use to look at Web sites, malware had taken over the machine. A bit of sleuthing revealed that some clever teenagers at heart had used Google’s iFrame as a vector to corrupt a computer. Nice. This particular exploit left my machine without the ability to do much of anything. If you get snookered by image malware on a Windows machine, you will have to use some crafty techniques such as running Task Manager, clicking on Run when you hold down the Control key, and working with this Swiss cheese operating system. So I got to revert back to my old command line self. Semi fun.
You can find out about the Google images malware thing in “Attackers Using Google Image Search to Distribute Malware.” I noted that in Google’s “Sort by Subject in Google Images,” there was some cheerleading for a function I don’t need. Er, a keyword search is a subject to me. Google is excited about this function. The write up pants:
Sorting by subject uses algorithms that identify relationships among images found on the web and presents those images in visual groups, expanding on the technology developed for Google Similar Images and Google Image Swirl. By looking at multiple sources of similarities, such as pixel values and semantic relationships, and by mining massive amounts of data, we can make meaningful connections and groupings among images.
In my opinion, we have a Microsoft Office type of disconnect. I want to do something and I don’t want software to do something else. Whether I am pasting text or formatting a table, Microsoft’s engineers are so darned smart that the software does what it thinks I should do. The software does not do what I want to do. Google Images is moving along this knife edge. I wanted a picture and I got an exploit.
How about getting the basics right? Skip the fancy talk about semantics and find a way to deliver the basics—one click access to an image without the accompaniment of some high IQ teenagers who want me to practice my command line skills. (For more on Google security check out “Chrome’s Security Crown Slips”. Wow. Pretty exciting. What happens to folks who, unlike me, don’t know how to work around an exploit, losing access to their computer and maybe data. No more Google Images for me.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2011
Freebie just like Google images’ malware
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[…] Google Images: What Is in Focus? Images or Security? Neither? Both? Beyond Search: This weekend (May 7 and 8, 2011), I wanted a US government picture of earth taken from space… I bopped over to Google.com, clicked on Images… One caught my eye and I clicked it. The Google iFrame thing popped up. I clicked the image, saved a copy to a USB, hit the button on my KVM control, and worked some Photoshop / Gimp distortions. When I clicked back to the machine I use to look at Web sites, malware had taken over the machine. […]
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