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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

#41

Post by cobbzilla »

amelius wrote: post #36
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…

I think we should limit companies to a maximum of N employees. This will ensure more modularity in the market. And more competition as well, because barriers are lower.

interesting idea, impossible to enforce. we'd end up with even more contractors, and mega-conglomerates of hundreds of companies with ~N employees each.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#42

Post by jabl »

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 guess at their scale and the business they're in, it's cheaper to dedicate a few engineer-hours/days/weeks to implement an overkill wiping procedure rather than arguing with potential customers that "no, it's not really feasible to extract usable data with an electron microscope despite what you have read on the interwebs". Or even worse, losing said customers if they're not persuaded by your arguments.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#43

Post by matt_wulfeck »

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…

The fact that you're reading an article about a paper Google just published suggests it's not as closed as your doomsaying might suggest. Also the paper notes that Google is one of the largest contributors of bugs and CVEs to KVM, which is a security tide that will raise a lot of boats.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#44

Post by bitJericho »

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…

This is how things have always been. It's the reason for our patent system, to incentivize companies to open up their proprietary tech.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#45

Post by lrem »

ust wrote: post #20
_yosefk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It seems a bit counterintuitive that open hardware results in less choice, so I disagree. I think that hardware is getting more and more open, also drivers for it. With FPGAs it is (relatively) straightforward for one to create it's own crypto processor and integrate it in the system. Also PCBs are getting easier and cheaper to make. I hope that also there will be some open PCB designs that incorporate some kind of c…

> Didn't also Facebook started some open server hardware initiative? I don't remember what happened with that...

It's alive and well, but not newsworthy, thus phased out of public's attention span.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#46

Post by tscs37 »

kevincox wrote: post #30
tscs37 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, yes, that's what you shredder them for.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#47

Post by zer0gravity »

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…

> We are heading onto a more closed ecosystem than we are used to up until here.

Not necessarily. Balancing forces always come up when this kind of things happen. The closing in of big players may give a big boost to open source hardware alternatives, which combined with the advent of 3d printing, may very well lead to the democratization of hardware...

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#48

Post by throwawayish »

problems wrote: post #14
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)…

If you use on-board crypto on most SSDs, there's a dedicated place for key storage and using the SSD's onboard wipe feature just changes the key and TRIMs the whole drive. Most of these drives use cryptographic keys even if you don't use a password on the device. Think about it as an SSD manufacturer - what's the easiest way to wipe a drive? To actually go and zero out every cell on the disk or to overwrite a very sm…

> Think about it as an SSD manufacturer - what's the easiest way to wipe a drive?

That's not the reason why encryption is always on. Flash endurance is; encrypting the data before FEC means that it will have a random distribution, which avoids pathological worst cases with certain workloads. You could also use a different (cheaper) scrambler than AES (like CPUs do [1]), but since encryption is a marketable feature...

[1] Which are also switching to using AES and offering memory encryption in current mainstream architectures.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#49

Post by swegg »

amelius wrote: post #37

But if they don't own an IC fab, how do they know it is secure?

Basically splitting the trusted circuit and testing the parts separately. This requires a trusted master circuit, but it can be arbitrarily small.

See https://perso.uclouvain.be/fstandae/PUBLIS/177.pdf

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#50

Post by ocdtrekkie »

vgt wrote: post #10
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 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…

Let's be clear: The customer never wins when the product is closed. Google used to understand that: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html

In realty, mom-and-pop don't need these security developments, because mom-and-pop have much less attack surface on a server running in their back room. The cloud necessitates it be possible to manage a server over the Internet, but for many situations that isn't necessary. And in many cases, the limited needs a mom-and-pop company has doesn't require their infrastructure be public facing on the Internet at all.

I'd argue the only reason one needs these "world-class security developments" is because Google itself is a world-class target. The sort of threats you're defending against would almost never be necessary for a smaller business with an on-premises solution to be concerned about.

Many small business internally need little more than a shared network drive, rudimentary user management, etc. And you'd be stunned how many businesses today still operate off a single AOL mail account.

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