Lorem Ipsum: Of Good & Evil, Google & China
Summary: Security researchers Michael Shoukry of FireEye and a researcher known as "Kraeh3n" found that typing "lorem ipsum" into Google Translate from Latin to English returned "China," with capitalization and repetition producing phrases such as "NATO," "The Internet," "The Company," and "China is very very sexy." Just before midnight on Aug. 16, 2014, Google Translate stopped translating "lorem" into anything but "lorem," and a Google spokesman said the change fixed a bug aligning "lorem ipsum" Latin boilerplate with unrelated English text rather than a security vulnerability.
Key Takeaway: Kraeh3n said someone learned to game Translate's crowd-sourced learning to create alternate meanings that could potentially transmit messages covertly, and Shoukry noted the placeholder text is so widely used that people are desensitized to it and never question where it came from.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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