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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

#71

Post by problems »

throwawayish wrote: post #48
problems wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...…

Ah, interesting. That's really cool. I guess it makes things easier for them and better for their customers in several ways at once.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#72

Post by kakarot »

a_imho wrote: post #70
kakarot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got links?

For me, the whole takeaway of the Snowden leaks was that the NSA can legally force Google (or anyone) to hand over basically anything, am I mistaken? Articles like [1] seems to underline they are indeed working together. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/nsa-google_n_527343...

An abusive, rapey relationship is not the same thing as being "in bed".

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#73

Post by skybrian »

cookiecaper wrote: post #32
pm90 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reduces the resources needed to bootstrap your own company. Of course once it reaches a certain size, it makes it more cost effective to host your resources internally. There are also many organizations who do not want to deal with a whole division dedicated to maintaining a reliable, distributed, secure computer network for their employees and would be more willing to pay for the cloud rather than the extra peopl…

This is not really true. Not "once you reach a certain size", but once you move off the lowest-tier starter hardware, cloud quickly becomes much more expensive than owning hardware, and security solutions continue to depend on the individual administrators (most backups do too). Cloud's biggest benefit is really convenience, because you don't need to go to the datacenter and put in another hard drive yourself when yo…

For "convenience" substitute "having the technical sophistication to manage it properly". How many companies know enough to hire and retain top-notch people to run a datacenter and keep upgrading it?

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#74

Post by hodgesrm »

tlb wrote: post #67

"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) on-premise" Why not just shred all decommissioned disks? Someone must be buying them for enough money that Google created a multi-step process for cleaning and ve…

Just speculation but they could be used elsewhere in Google for test/dev or pre-prod environments.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#75

Post by nickik »

lrem wrote: post #45
ust wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you link?

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#76

Post by Pyxl101 »

a_imho wrote: post #70
kakarot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got links?

For me, the whole takeaway of the Snowden leaks was that the NSA can legally force Google (or anyone) to hand over basically anything, am I mistaken? Articles like [1] seems to underline they are indeed working together. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/nsa-google_n_527343...

The Snowden disclosures did not suggest that Internet companies like Google were coordinating with NSA. The disclosures suggested that NSA was wiretapping all traffic across the Internet, and then parsing it, storing it, and indexing it so as to be able to make sense of what traffic represented e.g. a Google web search, and then search that semantically later.

Because at the time Google did not use encryption in their network links between data centers, NSA was able to siphon up a whole lot of information that way - maybe more than just interaction between users and Google services, potentially as much as interaction between internal components of Google.

Anyway, Google and other companies responded by employing encryption in these links, and promoting the use of encryption across a number of other protocols. The Snowden disclosures were in my perspective a catalyst for Google's promotion of HTTPS in the Chrome browser, and TLS in Gmail, and probably Certificate Transparency. The fact that these initiatives such as encryption between data centers started after the disclosures suggests that they were a response from Google to thwart this kind of surveillance.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#77

Post by stepanhruda »

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…

http://opencompute.org proves the exact opposite

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#78

Post by a_imho »

kakarot wrote: post #72
a_imho wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the whole takeaway of the Snowden leaks was that the NSA can legally force Google (or anyone) to hand over basically anything, am I mistaken? Articles like [1] seems to underline they are indeed working together. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/nsa-google_n_527343...

An abusive, rapey relationship is not the same thing as being "in bed".

That link is anything but an abusive relationship. Still, I fail to see how silicone is a countermeasure to a court order.

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#79

Post by Buge »

a_imho wrote: post #70
kakarot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got links?

For me, the whole takeaway of the Snowden leaks was that the NSA can legally force Google (or anyone) to hand over basically anything, am I mistaken? Articles like [1] seems to underline they are indeed working together. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/nsa-google_n_527343...

If the NSA could force Google to hand over anything, why were there Snowden slides showing that the NSA was secretly tapping Google's internal networks?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...

Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon

#80

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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