Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
theregister.co.uk
Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
1–10 of 129 posts
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#2I barely dug into the article when It came to me: Google just did a lockout chip, 1980s Nintendo style.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#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) on-premise.”
Interesting. There were discussions on the past on how to clean HDD, if multiple-passes were really necessary or not.
Then SDD become the problem, since there is a interface between what you see (from the OS) and where the data really is (inside those chips). Now Google not only encrypts data before saving (that should be enough, no?) but also tries to wipe using multiple passes and 2 verifications.
Wonder how many companies do that.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#4I barely dug into the article when It came to me: Google just did a lockout chip, 1980s Nintendo style.
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.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#5This 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 cloud segment, it is dis-incentivized from selling the solution.
Amazon Glacier is another one. It's an interesting long-term storage solution, whose hardware implementation is unavailable to the market, since AMZN can better explore it as a service under AWS.
We are heading onto a more closed ecosystem than we are used to up until here. The cloud, which gave us the immense positive benefit of moving all capex to opex, is birthing this immense negative side effect of closing off hardware implementations in favour of exploring the added value in the form of services.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#6I barely dug into the article when It came to me: Google just did a lockout chip, 1980s Nintendo style.
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.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#7> 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)…
'multi-step process' doesn't imply they are wiping more than once, only that their procedure consists of multiple steps (e.g. wipe + verification)
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#8This 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. "
It wouldn't be more open even if they didn't spin their own hardware. You won't ever see it nor have access to it on a low level - it's 'the cloud'. The only thing it tells us is that they have reached a scale where custom hardware makes things cheaper, more reliable and more manageable for them.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#9This 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, increasingly often no ability to run binaries unsigned by someone in a small set of vendors.
Moreover, the GPUs and more so, DSPs and ISPs in your phone or PC are hidden from you in that they run code written by a very small number of people. You don't even have an idea how many small DSP cores are scattered throughout a desktop-class chip, let alone what they do or how to program them. Effectively it's for internal use of a very small number of hardware and software vendors, and the software is very much tied to the hardware.
The reason computing hardware used to be open is that very few could make it and they only stood to gain from making it usable in as many applications as possible, or at least so they thought. Once (almost-)cloning hardware products became increasingly cheap with less and less vertically intergated hardware vendors (from fab to design), vertical integration moved to design+software because that's how you fend off competition today.
Re: Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon
#10This 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 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.
(work at Google cloud)