Google has unveiled its latest move in the fight against cyber-attacks, a team of elite hackers known as 'Project Zero'. We are told that the team will be hunting for bugs and vulnerabilities in all popular software which interfaces the Internet, whether it be a Google IP or not.
The search giant publicly unveiled the team of more than 10 top security researchers today, announcing their sole mission of tracking down and neutering zero-day exploits in consumer software and significantly reducing the number of people harmed by targeted attacks. "You should be able to use the web without fear that a criminal or state-sponsored actor is exploiting software bugs to infect your computer, steal secrets or monitor your communications," Google security researcher and lead of Project Zero, Chris Evans said in a blog post.
Google's Chris Evans
Besides blocking criminals, the effort also seems to be partly aimed at blocking intelligence agencies such as China's Third Department of the People's Liberation Army and America's National Security Agency.
Notable members of Project Zero currently include:
- Ben Hawkes, who has discovered numerous of bugs in popular software such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Office,
- George Hotz, who dismantled Google's Chrome OS defences, winning the company's Pwnium backing competition this year and was the world's first hacker to crack AT&T's lock on the iPhone in 2007,
- Ian Beer, who found six bugs in Apple's iOS, OSX and Safari platforms.
Bugs found will only be reported to the software's vendor, and will only become public once a patch is available. "You'll be able to monitor vendor time-to-fix performance, see any discussion about exploitability, and view historical exploits and crash traces," once the flaws are announced, said Evans.
Google removes Google+ real name policy
Google announced, in a public apology on Tuesday, that it will be reversing its 'real names' policy for good, allowing users to use any name they wish across Google services.
Apologising for three years of user dissatisfaction and anger, the news comes as quite a surprise and a huge turn around for Google, after standing its ground on the policy for so long. Google started a mass account suspension and deletion not long after the launch of Google+ in July 2011, where many accounts were deleted without warning.
Three years on, Google is showing signs that it is finally listening to its users. But is it too little too late? What are your thoughts?
