14 DAY TRIAL // Gmail is one of the top web-based email technologies but this doesn't necessarily mean it is also 100 percent safe to use. And this statement is sustained by a new security flaw discovered by Petko D. Petkov, a researcher at GNU Citizen, who wrote on his blog that "it is very critical and very unlikely that you will detect it unless you are an uber user." It seems like the exploitation can be done in a matter of seconds as the vulnerable consumers are lured to visit a malicious page while being logged in into the Gmail account. If the dangerous website is fully loaded, the attacker is then able to access all the conversations just like the owner of the account.
Obviously, the researcher didn't provide the details of the exploitations but it was reported the flaw is still unpatched so I guess we're all in danger. Personally, I advise you to avoid clicking on unknown or untrusted weblinks while being logged in into the Gmail account. According to The Register, the super giant Google is already investigating the problem so a fix of the flaw should be released anytime soon.
This security vulnerability comes only two days after another Google product, Search Appliance, was affected by a flaw which could allow an attacker who successfully exploits the hole to access all the private data.
This is quite bad news for the Mountain View company since the Sunnyvale rival Yahoo recently revealed the final version of Yahoo Mail which comes with stunning features when it comes to a web-based mail technology. However, it looks like the Google folks are also working on a Gmail improvement although it's not quite clear if they want to release an improved version of the service or it's only an interface update.