Google security researchers Ben Laurie and Adam Langley propose a new way in which digital certificates are issued and verified, to make sure that situations in which CAs issue them unknowingly will become rare or even inexistent.
In a paper called “Certificate Authority Transparency and Auditability,” Laurey and Langley state that another important objective is to make sure that users are protected against unlawfully issued certificates.
Still in rough development, a new extension for Google Chrome puts in your hands a useful power tool for separating your data from Facebook apps of dubious origin. Called OOptOut (download), the add-on by Chad Selph helpfully lists above the Facebook header for you any permissions that a newly-installed Facebook app requests.
Google yesterday pulled the plug on an ambitious green-technology initiative, a casualty of the Internet giant's strategy to shed peripheral projects.
In a company blog, Google's senior vice president of operations and Google Fellow Urs Holzle listed "Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal" as one of seven projects that were being shut down because they didn't catch on as hoped.
Antivirus experts disagree with Chris DiBona, Google's open-source programs manager, who recently said that there is no virus problem on the Android platform and that companies selling anti-malware software for mobile operating systems are "charlatans."
"Yes, virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you bs protection software for Android, RIM and IOS," DiBona said in a post on Google+. "They are charlatans and scammers. If you work for a company selling virus protection for Android, RIM or IOS you should be ashamed of yourself," he added.
The practice of "security by obscurity" on the Apple's iOS needs to improve as smartphone adoption increases, according to Blue Coat US vice president of Cloud services, Anthony James.
James, an ex-pat Australian who has worked in the US for 10 years with security companies such as Fortinet, said iOS users have been lulled into a false sense of security because Apple doesn't check an application for security controls before it is published.
Google, Yahoo, Facebook and several other large Web companies today joined a growing chorus of strong opposition to proposed legislation that aims to curb online IP and copyright theft by foreign sites.
The opponents contend that the two proposed laws, the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) and the PROTECT IP Act (S.968), would result in Internet censorship. Critics say both bills are overly broad and mostly serve the interests of Hollywood and the U.S. music industry.
The intellectual property lawsuit between Oracle and Google over the Android mobile OS won't go to trial until next year, according to a ruling made Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the judge overseeing the case.
Oracle sued Google last year, claiming that Android violated a number of copyrights and patents it holds on the Java programming language. Google has denied wrongdoing. The trial was initially set to begin Oct. 31 but was postponed last week by Judge William Alsup due to scheduling conflicts with a major criminal trial.
Google's Chrome contains a critical vulnerability that under certain circumstances allows attackers to plant malware on a Windows PC, a security company said last week.
According to Slovenia-based Acros Security, Google would not categorize the bug as a vulnerability, and instead called it a "strange behavior that [they] should consider changing."
Google Chrome contains a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to silently execute remote code on a victim's machine outside of the browser's built-in sandbox protections, according to researchers at Slovenia-based Acros Security.
According to Google, however, the issue is not technically a flaw, but rather a “strange behavior” that would require substantial user manipulation to exploit.
Google’s complaints about patent-based attacks against Android don’t seem to be doing the company any good. We all know Steve Jobs pledged to destroy Android, claiming it stole its ideas from Apple’s iOS. Yet what is likely an even bigger threat comes from Microsoft, which claims that more than half of all Android devices are now subject to patent licensing agreements.
