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posted by on Tuesday January 17 2017, @11:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the only-the-NSA-is-allowed-access dept.

Google has published a Infrastructure Security Design Overview that explains how it secures the cloud it uses for its own operations and for public cloud services.

Revealed last Friday, the document outlines six layers of security and reveals some interesting factoids about the Alphabet subsidiary's operations, none more so than the revelation that "we also design custom chips, including a hardware security chip that is currently being deployed on both servers and peripherals. These chips allow us to securely identify and authenticate legitimate Google devices at the hardware level."

That silicon works alongside cryptographic signatures employed "over low-level components like the BIOS, bootloader, kernel, and base operating system image."

"These signatures can be validated during each boot or update," the document says, adding that "the components are all Google-controlled, built, and hardened. With each new generation of hardware we strive to continually improve security: for example, depending on the generation of server design, we root the trust of the boot chain in either a lockable firmware chip, a microcontroller running Google-written security code, or the above mentioned Google-designed security chip."

Source: The Register


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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:48AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:48AM (#455300) Homepage Journal

    I just finished the first book in William Hertling's "Singularity Series" (good stuff, recommended). The action all takes place within Avogadro Corp., which is very clearly "Google" in an alternate universe.

    I'm just starting the second book, in which the company has created the successor to the Internet, the "Mesh". To do this, it uses custom silicon to provide security, specificically, to identify and authenticate company devices to each other.

    TFA: Fiction turns out to be reality...

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