Google Says Wallet Flaw Fixed - The UpStream

Google Says Wallet Flaw Fixed

posted Saturday Feb 18, 2012 by Scott Ertz

Google Says Wallet Flaw Fixed

It has been an interesting week at Google. Last week, it was discovered that there were two security flaws in Google Wallet. This week, the laughably-easy to exploit issue was addressed by the search giant quickly and publicly.

It started with Google shutting down provisioning of pre-paid cards, the important step in stealing a user's information, until they were able to find and fix the issue. Google has issued a hotfix to prevent re-provisioning of existing pre-paid cards and restored access to pre-paid cards in general.

To find out what Google said about the issue and find details on the "fix," hit the break.

Google released a statement shortly after reinstating pre-paid cards,

Yesterday afternoon, we restored the ability to issue new prepaid cards to the Wallet. In addition, we issued a fix that prevents an existing prepaid card from being re-provisioned to another user. While we're not aware of any abuse of prepaid cards or the Wallet PIN resulting from these recent reports, we took this step as a precaution to ensure the security of our Wallet customers. If you are unable to access your previous prepaid card balance for any reason, please contact our toll-free support for assistance.

After initial testing of the process, it does appear that provisioning existing cards will not work, but not in the way you would expect. Instead of data not being available, you are instead met with a message of "Prepaid is unavailable" with a Try Again and Remove Card option. Not quite a solution, more of a half-baked media front.

So, knowing how hard Google worked on "fixing" this serious problem, are you willing to use Google Wallet now, or are you still concerned about Google's security model. Let us know in the comments section.

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