Google Stored Passwords of G Suite Customers in Plain Text for 14 Years

Facebook faced the Backlash from many security experts and the community for storing the passwords of the millions of users in plain text. The company explained that the issues with the encryption algorithm saved the passwords of millions of Facebook users in plain text. Not just Facebook users, but Instagram users also faced a similar problem. Fortunately, Facebook fixed the problem after the security experts revealed it. Now, Google has also made the same mistake by storing the passwords of the G Suite users in plain text for a whopping fourteen years.

Google is currently facing Backlash as for the first time; it is revealed that the company has saved the password of a few hundred G Suite customers in plain text. Thankfully, the passwords were stored on a private server of Google, which is virtually impenetrable, but in case of the worst nightmare, it could have been leaked. Google acknowledged the issue and informed the affected customers of the problem and advised them to change the passwords. Also, Google did not share the details about the problem and the number of users affected by this fiasco.

As the passwords text file was stored on the private server of the company, almost 20,000 of the employees could have gained access to the same file. Google did not share the details if the file was accessed by any of the employees or not, but is asking the G Suite users to change passwords immediately. According to the statement from Google, a subset of the G Suite Enterprise users are affected and not the entire G Suite user base. Google said they take the security of the Enterprise customers and have fixed the problems with the algorithm that caused the passwords to be stored in Plain Text.