News Gmail glitch yields access to messages

Trouble at Searchzilla's mill? It would seem so, according to the report at news.com - seems that any Tom, Dick or Cardinal Biggles could query info on the last mail sent, until Googles little Dutch Boy plugged the hole:

A problem with Google's e-mail service, Gmail, let any user query the company's servers for information on the last message sent, two hackers announced on Wednesday.

The programmers, part of a community site dedicated to the Unix-like FreeBSD operating system, found that an improperly formatted address allowed Gmail users to retrieve the message body of the last HTML-formatted e-mail processed by the server.

"The result is a compromise of the privacy of communications over Gmail," the two programmers stated in their write-up of the problem. "Message content and address information are easily--if somewhat randomly--available to unintended recipients."

Google acknowledged the problem Wednesday and said it had been fixed. It is unclear how long the glitch lasted.

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