Question

1. Search the web for news on computer security breaches that occurred during April-August 2015-2018. Research one such reported incident. Prepare a report focusing on what the problem was, how and why it occurred and what are the possible solutions.

Answer 1

Computer security breach incident reported to have occurred during April-August 2015-2018:
Google Plus or Google+ with 52.5 million and 500,000 records stolen in 2015 and 2018 and has been assumed any exposed data being publicly available. This happened between 2015 to March 2018, and from November 7 to November 13. Google Plus is a social network type of business. This business is run by Google, Inc.

What the problem was:
Private information of people, end users, home users, employees of different companies on their Google+ profiles, paying G Suite users, where the APIs let the developers view profile information not marked as public (private), including full names, email addresses, birth dates, age, gender, profile photos, places lived, job title, occupation, employer, and relationship status were compromised and exposed.

How it occurred:
It occurred because of poor security. A software glitch or malfunction caused Google exposing the personal profile data of 500,000 Google+ users. The second data breach affected 52.5 million users exposing information including names, email addresses, occupations, and ages. This happened between November 7th and November 13th.

Why it occurred:
It was due to a huge security lapse and specifically due to API failures. There was an issue in meeting users’ privacy expectations. It was due to a flaw in programming interfaces Google had made available to applications' developers that interacted with users’ Google+ profiles.

What possible solutions are:
Google decided to shut down Google+ social networking service to consumers for good. Google informed it resolved the issue and will contact those users whose information has been compromised. Google announced it would cut off API access to the product within the next 90 days. Google's decision was not to publicly disclose the glitch. They conducted a two-week test that was designed to measure the impact of the API bugs before they were fixed.