Google Online Security Blog
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The latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet.
Google Online Security Blog
1w ago
Tianhao Chi and Puneet Sood, Google Public DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a fundamental protocol used on the Internet to translate human-readable domain names (e.g., www.example.com) into numeric IP addresses (e.g., 192.0.2.1) so that devices and servers can find and communicate with each other. When a user enters a domain name in their browser, the DNS resolver (e.g. Google Public DNS) locates the authoritative DNS nameservers for the requested name, and queries one or more of them to obtain the IP address(es) to return to the browser.
When DNS was launched in the early 1980s as a tru ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
1w ago
Posted by Eugene Rodionov and Ivan Lozano, Android Team
With steady improvements to Android userspace and kernel security, we have noticed an increasing interest from security researchers directed towards lower level firmware. This area has traditionally received less scrutiny, but is critical to device security. We have previously discussed how we have been prioritizing firmware security, and how to apply mitigations in a firmware environment to mitigate unknown vulnerabilities.
In this post we will show how the Kernel Address Sanitizer (KASan) can be used to proactively discover vulnerabilit ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
3w ago
Posted by Jasika Bawa, Xinghui Lu, Google Chrome Security & Jonathan Li, Alex Wozniak, Google Safe Browsing
For more than 15 years, Google Safe Browsing has been protecting users from phishing, malware, unwanted software and more, by identifying and warning users about potentially abusive sites on more than 5 billion devices around the world. As attackers grow more sophisticated, we've seen the need for protections that can adapt as quickly as the threats they defend against. That’s why we're excited to announce a new version of Safe Browsing that will provide real-time, privacy-preserving ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
1M ago
Alex Rebert, Software Engineer, Christoph Kern, Principal Engineer, Security Foundations
Google’s Project Zero reports that memory safety vulnerabilities—security defects caused by subtle coding errors related to how a program accesses memory—have been "the standard for attacking software for the last few decades and it’s still how attackers are having success". Their analysis shows two thirds of 0-day exploits detected in the wild used memory corruption vulnerabilities. Despite substantial investments to improve memory-unsafe languages, those vulnerabilities continue to top the most common ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
2M ago
Posted by Eugene Liderman, Director of Mobile Security Strategy, Google
From its founding, Android has been guided by principles of openness, transparency, safety, and choice. Android gives you the freedom to choose which device best fits your needs, while also providing the flexibility to download apps from a variety of sources, including preloaded app stores such as the Google Play Store or the Galaxy Store; third-party app stores; and direct downloads from the Internet.
Keeping users safe in an open ecosystem takes sophisticated defenses. That’s why Android provides multiple layers of prot ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
2M ago
Posted by Lars Bergstrom – Director, Android Platform Tools & Libraries and Chair of the Rust Foundation Board
Back in 2021, we announced that Google was joining the Rust Foundation. At the time, Rust was already in wide use across Android and other Google products. Our announcement emphasized our commitment to improving the security reviews of Rust code and its interoperability with C++ code. Rust is one of the strongest tools we have to address memory safety security issues. Since that announcement, industry leaders and government agencies have echoed our sentiment.
We are delighted to a ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
2M ago
Royal Hansen, Vice President of Privacy, Safety and Security Engineering
This week, the United Nations convened member states to continue its years-long negotiations on the UN Cybercrime Treaty, titled “Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.”
As more aspects of our lives intersect with the digital sphere, law enforcement around the world has increasingly turned to electronic evidence to investigate and disrupt criminal activity. Google takes the threat of cybercrime very seriously, and dedicates significant resources to combating it ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
2M ago
Dongge Liu and Oliver Chang, Google Open Source Security Team, Jan Nowakowski and Jan Keller, Machine Learning for Security Team
The AI world moves fast, so we’ve been hard at work keeping security apace with recent advancements. One of our approaches, in alignment with Google’s Safer AI Framework (SAIF), is using AI itself to automate and streamline routine and manual security tasks, including fixing security bugs. Last year we wrote about our experiences using LLMs to expand vulnerability testing coverage, and we’re excited to share some updates.
Today, we’re releasing our fuzzing ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
2M ago
Posted by Sherif Hanna, Group Product Manager, Pixel Security
Helping Pixel owners upgrade to the easier, safer way to sign in
Your phone contains a lot of your personal information, from financial data to photos. Pixel phones are designed to help protect you and your data, and make security and privacy as easy as possible. This is why the Pixel team has been especially excited about passkeys—the easier, safer alternative to passwords.
Passkeys are safer because they’re unique to each account, and are more resistant against online attacks such as phishing. They’re easier to use because there’s ..read more
Google Online Security Blog
3M ago
Posted by Keishi Hattori, Sergei Glazunov, Bartek Nowierski on behalf of the MiraclePtr team
Welcome back to our latest update on MiraclePtr, our project to protect against use-after-free vulnerabilities in Google Chrome. If you need a refresher, you can read our previous blog post detailing MiraclePtr and its objectives.
More platforms
We are thrilled to announce that since our last update, we have successfully enabled MiraclePtr for more platforms and processes:
In June 2022, we enabled MiraclePtr for the browser process on Windows and Android.
In September 2022, we expanded its coverage to ..read more