MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—The latest to warn of a potential data breach? Google.
The company has warned Google Apps administrators that private “Whois” records, that is the list of administrative and technical contact information on domains, has been exposed.
According to Google, the data breach involves approximately 282,000 different Internet domains. Cisco said that breach means that the affected domains are at greater risk of ID theft and Spam campaigns.
Google told its Apps administrators that the breach occurred due to a “software defect” in its Google Apps domain renewal system that deactivated certain privacy settings. The defect and potential leaks began in mid-2013. In a blog post, Cisco stated, “The reality of this Whois information leak is that it exposed [details] of hundreds of thousands of registration records for domains that had opted into privacy protection, without their knowledge or consent, to the entire Internet. This information will be available permanently as a number of services keep Whois information archived."
Google has not confirmed the size of the data at risk, but has said the error has been corrected.