Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
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Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#2Misleading headline. They blocked it for a few hours until n people complained. There was more legitimate use than expected, so they unblocked it again.
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#3Misleading headline. They blocked it for a few hours until n people complained. There was more legitimate use than expected, so they unblocked it again.
I hope that such nobody confuses doing something like that with a legitimate way of running a network. Deciding that you'll make an exception for popular sites makes things worse instead of better.
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#4Could they not just block google forms? I don’t see many users entering their username and password into a PowerPoint/Word Document.
Perhaps they could implement some more advanced email filters, e.g. removing all links to google docs, instead of blocking the service for all users?
I'd imagine a mass of the user-base of Oxford uses Google Docs for important things, from group work on a PowerPoint/Word doc, through storing their work in the cloud without the Office Suite.
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#5Could they not just block google forms? I don’t see many users entering their username and password into a PowerPoint/Word Document. Perhaps they could implement some more advanced email filters, e.g. removing all links to google docs, instead of blocking the service for all users? I'd imagine a mass of the user-base of Oxford uses Google Docs for important things, from group work on a PowerPoint/Word doc, through st…
No.
"Another is that traffic is encrypted. Many educational establishments will have some capability for filtering traffic to malicious URLs as it flows through their network. That’s easy with unencrypted traffic. If the site uses SSL, then you have to do some kind of SSL interception."
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#6It's the perfect example of why security teams are often considered to be the least friendly, least approachable part of an already unapproachable department (IT).
Their reasoning seems to be "Google Docs causes us (the security team) hassle, we don't use Google Docs, so we'll shut it down".
They might as well of shut down the whole of the Internet, for all their nonsensical reasoning, except they'd of been affected themselves then..
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#7Could they not just block google forms? I don’t see many users entering their username and password into a PowerPoint/Word Document. Perhaps they could implement some more advanced email filters, e.g. removing all links to google docs, instead of blocking the service for all users? I'd imagine a mass of the user-base of Oxford uses Google Docs for important things, from group work on a PowerPoint/Word doc, through st…
No. "Another is that traffic is encrypted. Many educational establishments will have some capability for filtering traffic to malicious URLs as it flows through their network. That’s easy with unencrypted traffic. If the site uses SSL, then you have to do some kind of SSL interception."
Network Admins need to learn that looking at what your users do and meddling with his data is not a legitimate activity. They should have learned that long ago. Fortunately, with encryption becoming more widespread, they will have to learn the lesson.
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#8How about putting a middle page up with a warning?
So a student on the university network clicks a link to google docs and a warning appears warning of potential attacks using google docs, be aware, and click next to continue.
Is this doable?
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#9It's the perfect example of why security teams are often considered to be the least friendly, least approachable part of an already unapproachable department (IT). Their reasoning seems to be "Google Docs causes us (the security team) hassle, we don't use Google Docs, so we'll shut it down". They might as well of shut down the whole of the Internet, for all their nonsensical reasoning, except they'd of been affected…
No, their reasoning is that the continuous phishing attacks caused unacceptable trouble with their email system (e.g., Hotmail dropping all emails coming from Oxford). Due to extensive international collaborations, keeping a universities email system running is probably one of the most important tasks of the IT team. Google Docs is nice and useful, but nowhere near as important. Given that they, practically speaking, had no alternative way of dealing with the phishing attacks effectively, they made the right choice in temporarily suspending Google Docs access.
Re: Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
#10This kind of black-listing of specific domains is, unfortunately, just a game of whack-a-mole that's very hard for defenders to win.
If they're seeing targeted phishing (which the article implies that they are), then the attackers will just observe the drop off in people following the links and move the phishing forms to another domain or service, making it very difficult for the admins to keep up.
Really addressing this kind of problem has to come down to a combination of awareness training and improved authentication techniques (i.e. move away from static username/password combinations)