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Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#21

Post by pdkl95 »

sergiosgc wrote: post #5

This is another signal of an interesting development on the hardware front. What used to be decoupled, with some companies offering hardware, and different companies buying hardware, is now coupled and hidden within these mega-companies (Google, Amazon, FB). Google is big enough to develop a trusted hardware solution for internal use only, it has no financial need to sell it. Worse, due to competitiveness in the clou…

More ground is lost in the cold[1] civil war[2] for control of the General Purpose Computer. I hope that everyone choosing to centralize computing power likes the future they are creating.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=2824 (sec. 10 - http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt )

[2] http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#22

Post by kabdib »

pm90 wrote: post #15
vgt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sign of changing times indeed, but for the consumer's benefit. It is absolutely in Google's best interests to externalize security for its customers as a differentiator of Google Cloud. The parent article itself links to the white paper that outlines how this is done for Google Cloud. I understand how one may consider this a "closed ecosystem" from one perspective. However, from a customer point of view any st…

> I understand how one may consider this a "closed ecosystem" from one perspective. However, from a customer point of view any startup or mom-and-pop can leverage these very complex and expensive world-class security developments, whereas in the past this access has been reserved to the very select few that could afford it. When the barrier to entry is lowered and access is commoditized, customer wins. I don't unders…

Pressure from governments to not supply consumers with hardware that is resistant to surveillance is one reason.

AFAIK, the consumer systems that are most resistant to physical attack (and that lack spooky things like Intel's system management CPU) are game consoles. The hardening is a requirement for anti-piracy and anti-cheating, and in newer generations of consoles it's been quite successful. Recent iPhones are a distant second in terms of security architecture.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#23

Post by tscs37 »

woliveirajr wrote: post #3

> Disks get the following treatment: > “We enable hardware encryption support in our hard drives and SSDs and meticulously track each drive through its lifecycle. Before a decommissioned encrypted storage device can physically leave our custody, it is cleaned using a multi-step process that includes two independent verifications. Devices that do not pass this wiping procedure are physically destroyed (e.g. shredded)…

I remember reading up on the BND (German Intelligence Agency) Guidelines on how they wipe their data.

They basically wipe the drive first and verify it appears to be wiped and then shred it. The highest level allows for only 0.5mm^2 sized particles with tolerance up to 1.5mm^2.

If data is encrypted, then in theory destroying the key should be sufficient given that the encryption is good (Chapoly or AES)

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#24

Post by kabdib »

digi_owl wrote: post #6
na85 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose if you're looking for a sound bite, yes. But whereas Nintendo's chip was DRM, this Google chip appears to be more about determinism in boots and server provisioning, allowing them to immediately cut out a server that appears malicious or that has been compromised. I.e. pry open case to insert an implant, chip notices bios has been altered, sends the "don't trust me" message to the network.

Makes me think of Intel's IME. It has legitimate uses on corporate desktops and servers. But when it makes its way to consumer desktops it runs face first into a massive conflict of interest.

IME's huge problem is its shroud of secrecy. The CPU can do just about anything on the bus, it has access to external ports, and the code it runs is encrypted.

From the viewpoint of a government agency, that's a tremendous surveillance enabler. It's really hard to imagine it's not been compromised.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#25

Post by azernik »

_yosefk wrote: post #9
sergiosgc wrote: post #5

This is another signal of an interesting development on the hardware front. What used to be decoupled, with some companies offering hardware, and different companies buying hardware, is now coupled and hidden within these mega-companies (Google, Amazon, FB). Google is big enough to develop a trusted hardware solution for internal use only, it has no financial need to sell it. Worse, due to competitiveness in the clou…

It's not the cloud - it's the sad downside of the democratization of hardware design, as in fabs like TSMC and IP companies like ARM making it relatively cheap to make your own chips with competitive functionality in a wide range of areas. There's a lot of custom hardware outside the cloud, say in embedded electronics, that's just as closed as the stuff in server farms - closed specs and no way to program the thing,…

Another good example that I have experience with - closed firmware blobs in everyone's wifi chipsets and cell phone basebands. Early-standard ARM processors are cheap enough to embed in peripherals these days, making it easy to hide your functionality in hard-to-extract embedded software.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#26

Post by dspillett »

woliveirajr wrote: post #3

> Disks get the following treatment: > “We enable hardware encryption support in our hard drives and SSDs and meticulously track each drive through its lifecycle. Before a decommissioned encrypted storage device can physically leave our custody, it is cleaned using a multi-step process that includes two independent verifications. Devices that do not pass this wiping procedure are physically destroyed (e.g. shredded)…

>* Devices that do not pass this wiping procedure are physically destroyed on-premise*

If you are going to go to that much effort why not physically destroy the drive anyway? You might still want to test them to flag up problems in your process, but if you have the facility locally why not use it for all drives instead of paying an external party to do some of them?

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#27

Post by digler999 »

sergiosgc wrote: post #18
vgt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sign of changing times indeed, but for the consumer's benefit. It is absolutely in Google's best interests to externalize security for its customers as a differentiator of Google Cloud. The parent article itself links to the white paper that outlines how this is done for Google Cloud. I understand how one may consider this a "closed ecosystem" from one perspective. However, from a customer point of view any st…

> However, from a customer point of view any startup or mom-and-pop can leverage these very complex and expensive world-class security developments, whereas in the past this access has been reserved to the very select few that could afford it. I don't expect startups or mom-and-pop's to build internal clouds. I do expect medium to large companies to do so. The current market turns innovations such as these into compe…

> and strategically it is the correct option (for them).

I agree. Consider what's at stake for them. I can't even begin to wrap my head around how bad that would be if an entire server farm got rooted. At least defending a bank you know what the attacker's endgame is: steal money/SSN's. If a server farm were hacked, you'd see identity theft, blackmail, massive customer (and e-commerce) downtime, malware distribution, ddos/large botnets, market manipulation (if you started spreading false news about a particular company, at scale, on social media), perhaps brute-force RSA/SSL cracking. If those guys got hacked, it could be an absolute shitstorm. So I dont blame them at all for creating their own TPM or whatever.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#28

Post by bsaul »

sergiosgc wrote: post #5

This is another signal of an interesting development on the hardware front. What used to be decoupled, with some companies offering hardware, and different companies buying hardware, is now coupled and hidden within these mega-companies (Google, Amazon, FB). Google is big enough to develop a trusted hardware solution for internal use only, it has no financial need to sell it. Worse, due to competitiveness in the clou…

it's probably going to be just a cycle. Much like energy is very centralized with a lot of custom hardware ( think nuclear power plants) but tends to have decentralized alternatives ( solar panels ) for some advantages, you'll probably end up with the same cycle with computing power. Once a single affordable machine will be able to serve all your applications to all your customers with zero maintenance cost ( because innovation will keep going on), you'll probably switch away from the cloud.

it may be in a long time though..

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#29

Post by detaro »

dspillett wrote: post #26
woliveirajr wrote: post #3

> Disks get the following treatment: > “We enable hardware encryption support in our hard drives and SSDs and meticulously track each drive through its lifecycle. Before a decommissioned encrypted storage device can physically leave our custody, it is cleaned using a multi-step process that includes two independent verifications. Devices that do not pass this wiping procedure are physically destroyed (e.g. shredded)…

>* Devices that do not pass this wiping procedure are physically destroyed on-premise* If you are going to go to that much effort why not physically destroy the drive anyway? You might still want to test them to flag up problems in your process, but if you have the facility locally why not use it for all drives instead of paying an external party to do some of them?

They don't say that the drives are all destroyed by the external parties. And even if they are, I could imagine that proper recycling is easier if you have the full drives and not a shredded mixture of all the materials in it.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#30

Post by kevincox »

tscs37 wrote: post #23
woliveirajr wrote: post #3

> Disks get the following treatment: > “We enable hardware encryption support in our hard drives and SSDs and meticulously track each drive through its lifecycle. Before a decommissioned encrypted storage device can physically leave our custody, it is cleaned using a multi-step process that includes two independent verifications. Devices that do not pass this wiping procedure are physically destroyed (e.g. shredded)…

I remember reading up on the BND (German Intelligence Agency) Guidelines on how they wipe their data. They basically wipe the drive first and verify it appears to be wiped and then shred it. The highest level allows for only 0.5mm^2 sized particles with tolerance up to 1.5mm^2. If data is encrypted, then in theory destroying the key should be sufficient given that the encryption is good (Chapoly or AES)

It also depends on how long you want the data to be safe. So if you are storing user data you probably don't want to release drives containing encrypted user data as you don't long they wanted that data to remain secret for.

Imagine that your user was Coca-cola and they uploaded their recipe. They wouldn't be happy if in 100 years the encryption was cracked.

Far fetched, maybe slightly but a real consideration.

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