Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System

[Dogbiscuit]

Article

[chronomatic]

The key part of the aticle:

The theft began with an instant message sent to a Google employee in China who was using Microsoft’s Messenger program, according to the person with knowledge of the internal inquiry, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

By clicking on a link and connecting to a “poisoned” Web site, the employee inadvertently permitted the intruders to gain access to his (or her) personal computer and then to the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Ultimately, the intruders were able to gain control of a software repository used by the development team.

First of all, these employees should have never been using Windows, and even if they had to for some odd reason, they should not have been using outdated browsers (I believe they were using IE6). With Google's promotion of Linux, and with its development of its own Linux based OS (Chrome), I find it quite humorous (and ironic) that they were compromised because of Windows.

Second, any OS that allows a machine to be compromised merely by clicking on a malicious link has something wrong with its design. Most other OS's would not such a compromise to occur.