Security Blog
The latest news and insights from Google on security and safety on the Internet
Speeding up and strengthening HTTPS connections for Chrome on Android
April 24, 2014
Posted by Elie Bursztein, Anti-Abuse Research Lead
Earlier this year, we deployed a new TLS cipher suite in Chrome that operates three times faster than AES-GCM on devices that don’t have AES hardware acceleration, including most Android phones, wearable devices such as Google Glass and older computers. This improves user experience, reducing latency and saving battery life by cutting down the amount of time spent encrypting and decrypting data.
To make this happen, Adam Langley, Wan-Teh Chang, Ben Laurie and I began implementing new algorithms -- ChaCha 20 for symmetric encryption and Poly1305 for authentication -- in OpenSSL and NSS in March 2013. It was a complex effort that required implementing a new abstraction layer in OpenSSL in order to support the Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) encryption mode properly. AEAD enables encryption and authentication to happen concurrently, making it easier to use and optimize than older, commonly-used modes such as CBC. Moreover,
recent attacks
against RC4 and CBC also prompted us to make this change.
The benefits of this new cipher suite include:
Better security: ChaCha20 is immune to padding-oracle attacks, such as the Lucky13, which affect CBC mode as used in TLS. By design, ChaCha20 is also immune to timing attacks. Check out a detailed description of TLS ciphersuites weaknesses in our earlier
post
.
Better performance: ChaCha20 and Poly1305 are very fast on mobile and wearable devices, as their designs are able to leverage common CPU instructions, including ARM vector instructions. Poly1305 also saves network bandwidth, since its output is only 16 bytes compared to HMAC-SHA1, which is 20 bytes. This represents a 16% reduction of the TLS network overhead incurred when using older ciphersuites such as RC4-SHA or AES-SHA. The expected acceleration compared to AES-GCM for various platforms is summarized in the chart below.
As of February 2014, almost all HTTPS connections made from Chrome browsers on Android devices to Google properties have used this new cipher suite. We plan to make it available as part of the Android platform in a future release. If you’d like to verify which cipher suite Chrome is currently using, on an Android device or on desktop, just click on the padlock in the URL bar and look at the connection tab. If Chrome is using ChaCha20-Poly1305 you will see the following information:
ChaCha20 and Poly1305 were designed by Prof. Dan Bernstein from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The simple and efficient design of these algorithms combined with the extensive vetting they received from the scientific community make us confident that these algorithms will bring the security and speed needed to secure mobile communication. Moreover, selecting algorithms that are free for everyone to use is also in line with our commitment to openness and transparency.
We would like to thank the people who made this possible: Dan Bernstein who invented and implemented both ChaCha/20 and Poly1305, Andrew Moon for his open-source implementation of Poly1305, Ted Krovetz for his open-source implementation of ChaCha20 and Peter Schwabe for his implementation work. We hope there will be even
greater adoption
of this cipher suite, and look forward to seeing other websites deprecate AES-SHA1 and RC4-SHA1 in favor of AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 since they offer safer and faster alternatives. IETF draft standards for this cipher suite are available
here
and
here
.
New Security Measures Will Affect Older (non-OAuth 2.0) Applications
April 23, 2014
Posted by Antonio Fuentes, Product Manager, Google Identity Team
There is nothing more important than making sure our users and their information stay safe online. Doing that means providing security features at the user-level like 2-Step Verification and recovery options, and also involves a lot of work behind the scenes, both at Google and with developers like you. We've already implemented developer tools including
Google Sign-In
and support for
OAuth 2.0 in Google APIs
and IMAP, SMTP and XMPP, and we’re always looking to raise the bar.
That's why, beginning in the second half of 2014, we'll start gradually increasing the security checks performed when users log in to Google. These additional checks will ensure that only the intended user has access to their account, whether through a browser, device or application. These changes will affect any application that sends a username and/or password to Google.
To better protect your users, we recommend you upgrade all of your applications to OAuth 2.0. If you choose not to do so, your users will be required to take extra steps in order to keep accessing your applications.
The standard Internet protocols we support all work with OAuth 2.0, as do most of our APIs. We leverage the work done by the IETF on OAuth 2.0 integration with IMAP, SMTP, POP, XMPP, CalDAV, and CardDAV.
In summary, if your application currently uses plain passwords to authenticate to Google, we strongly encourage you to minimize user disruption by switching to
OAuth 2.0
.
Street View and reCAPTCHA technology just got smarter
April 16, 2014
Posted by Vinay Shet, Product Manager, reCAPTCHA
Have you ever wondered how Google Maps knows the exact location of your neighborhood coffee shop? Or of the hotel you’re staying at next month? Translating a street address to an exact location on a map is harder than it seems. To take on this challenge and make Google Maps even more useful, we’ve been working on a new system to help locate addresses even more accurately, using some of the technology from the Street View and reCAPTCHA teams.
This technology finds and reads street numbers in Street View, and correlates those numbers with existing addresses to pinpoint their exact location on Google Maps. We’ve described these findings in a
scientific paper
at the
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
. In this paper, we show that this system is able to accurately detect and read difficult numbers in Street View with 90% accuracy.
Street View numbers correctly identified by the algorithm
These findings have surprising implications for spam and abuse protection on the Internet as well. For more than a decade,
CAPTCHAs
have used visual puzzles in the form of distorted text to help webmasters prevent automated software from engaging in abusive activities on their sites. Turns out that this new algorithm can also be used to read CAPTCHA puzzles—we found that it can decipher the hardest distorted text puzzles from reCAPTCHA with over 99% accuracy. This shows that the act of typing in the answer to a distorted image should not be the only factor when it comes to determining a human versus a machine.
Fortunately, Google’s reCAPTCHA has taken this into consideration, and reCAPTCHA is more secure today than ever before. Last year, we
announced
that we’ve significantly reduced our dependence on text distortions as the main differentiator between human and machine, and instead perform advanced risk analysis. This has also allowed us to simplify both our text CAPTCHAs as well as our audio CAPTCHAs, so that getting through this security measure is easy for humans, but still keeps websites protected.
CAPTCHA images correctly solved by the algorithm
Thanks to this research, we know that relying on distorted text alone isn’t enough. However, it’s important to note that simply identifying the text in CAPTCHA puzzles correctly doesn’t mean that reCAPTCHA itself is broken or ineffective. On the contrary, these findings have helped us build additional safeguards against bad actors in reCAPTCHA.
As the Street View and reCAPTCHA teams continue to work closely together, both will continue to improve, making Maps more precise and useful and reCAPTCHA safer and more effective. For more information, check out the
reCAPTCHA site
and the
scientific paper
from
ICLR 2014
.
Google Services Updated to Address OpenSSL CVE-2014-0160 (the Heartbleed bug)
April 9, 2014
Posted by Matthew O'Connor, Product Manager
You may have heard of “Heartbleed,” a flaw in OpenSSL that could allow the theft of data normally protected by SSL/TLS encryption.
We’ve assessed this vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services such as Search, Gmail, YouTube, Wallet, Play, Drive, Apps, App Engine,
AdWords, DoubleClick, Maps, Maps Engine, Earth, Analytics and Tag Manager
. Google Chrome and Chrome OS are not affected.
We are still working to patch some other Google services. We regularly and proactively look for vulnerabilities like this --
and encourage others to report them
-- so that that we can fix software flaws before they are exploited.
If you are a Google Cloud Platform or Google Search Appliance customer, or don’t use the latest version of Android, here is what you need to know:
Cloud SQL
We are currently patching Cloud SQL, with the patch rolling out to all instances today and tomorrow. In the meantime, users should use the IP whitelisting function to ensure that only known hosts can access their instances. Please find
instructions here
.
Google Compute Engine
Customers need to manually update OpenSSL on each running instance or should replace any existing images with versions including an updated OpenSSL. Once updated, each instance should be rebooted to ensure all running processes are using the updated SSL library. Please find
instructions here
.
Google Search Appliance (GSA)
Engineers have patched GSA and issued notices to customers. More information is available in the
Google Enterprise Support Portal
.
Android
All versions of Android are immune to CVE-2014-0160 (with the limited exception of Android 4.1.1; patching information for Android 4.1.1 is being distributed to Android partners).
We will continue working closely with the security research and open source communities, as doing so is one of the best ways we know to keep our users safe.
Apr 12
: Updated to add Google AdWords, DoubleClick, Maps, Maps Engine and Earth to the list of Google services that were patched early, but inadvertently left out at the time of original posting.
Apr 14
: In light of new research on extracting keys using the Heartbleed bug, we are recommending that Google Compute Engine (GCE) customers create new keys for any affected SSL services. Google Search Appliance (GSA) customers should also consider creating new keys after patching their GSA. Engineers are working on a patch for the GSA, and the
Google Enterprise Support Portal
will be updated with the patch as soon as it is available.
Also updated to add Google Analytics and Tag Manager to the list of Google services that were patched early, but inadvertently left out at the time of original posting.
Apr 16:
Updated to include information about GSA patch.
Apr 28:
Updated to add Google Drive, which was patched early but inadvertently left out at the time of original posting.
Google’s Public DNS intercepted in Turkey
March 29, 2014
Posted by Steven Carstensen, Software Engineer
We have received several credible reports and confirmed with our own research that Google’s Domain Name System (DNS) service has been intercepted by most Turkish ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
A DNS server tells your computer the address of a server it’s looking for, in the same way that you might look up a phone number in a phone book. Google operates DNS servers because we believe that you should be able to quickly and securely make your way to whatever host you’re looking for, be it
YouTube
, Twitter, or any other.
But imagine if someone had changed out your phone book with another one, which looks pretty much the same as before, except that the listings for a few people showed the wrong phone number. That’s essentially what’s happened: Turkish ISPs have set up servers that masquerade as Google’s DNS service.
If you could tell a user three things to do to stay safe online, what would they be?
March 26, 2014
Posted by Rob Reeder, User Experience Research Team
At Google, we’re constantly trying to improve security for our users. Besides the many technical security features we build, our efforts include educating users with advice about what they can do to stay safe online. Our
Safety Center
is a great example of this. But we’re always trying to do better and have been looking for ways to improve how we provide security advice to users.
That’s why we’ve started a research project to try to pare down existing security advice to a small set of things we can realistically expect our users to do to stay safe online. As part of this project, we are currently running a survey of security experts to see what advice they think is most important.
If you work in security, we’d really appreciate your input. Please take our survey here:
goo.gl/F4fJ59
.
With your input we can draw on our collective expertise to get closer to an optimal set of advice that users can realistically follow, and thus, be safer online. Thanks!
Staying at the forefront of email security and reliability: HTTPS-only and 99.978 percent availability
March 20, 2014
Posted by Nicolas Lidzborski, Gmail Security Engineering Lead
Cross-posted on the
Official Google Blog
and
Gmail Blog
Your email is important to you, and making sure it stays safe and always available is important to us. As you go about your day reading, writing, and checking messages, there are tons of security measures running behind the scenes to keep your email safe, secure, and there whenever you need it.
Starting today, Gmail will always use an encrypted HTTPS connection when you check or send email. Gmail
has supported HTTPS
since the day it launched, and in 2010 we made
HTTPS the default
. Today's change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail’s servers—no matter if you're using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet.
In addition, every single email message you send or receive—100 percent of them—is encrypted while moving internally. This ensures that your messages are safe not only when they move between you and Gmail's servers, but also as they move between Google's data centers—something we made a top priority after last summer’s revelations.
Of course, being able to access your email is just as important as keeping it safe and secure. In 2013, Gmail was available 99.978 percent of the time, which averages to less than two hours of disruption for a user for the entire year. Our engineering experts look after Google's services 24x7 and if a problem ever arises, they're on the case immediately. We keep you informed by posting updates on the
Apps Status Dashboard
until the issue is fixed, and we always conduct a full analysis on the problem to prevent it from happening again.
Our commitment to the security and reliability of your email is absolute, and we’re constantly working on ways to improve. You can learn about additional ways to keep yourself safe online, like
creating strong passwords
and
enabling 2-step verification
, by visiting the Security Center:
https://www.google.com/help/security
.
CAPTCHAs that capture your heart
February 14, 2014
Posted by Vinay Shet, Product Manager, reCAPTCHA
Notice something different about
reCAPTCHA
today? You guessed it; those tricky puzzles are now warm and fuzzy just in time for Valentine’s Day. Today across the U.S., we're sharing CAPTCHAs that spread the message of love.
Some examples of Valentine's Day CAPTCHAs
But wait. These look really easy. Does this mean that those pesky bots are going to crack these easy CAPTCHAs and abuse our favorite websites? Not so fast.
A few months ago,
we announced
an improved version of reCAPTCHA that uses advanced risk analysis techniques to distinguish humans from machines. This enabled us to relax the text distortions and show our users CAPTCHAs that adapt to their risk profiles. In other words, with a high likelihood, our valid human users would see CAPTCHAs that they would find easy to solve. Abusive traffic, on the other hand, would get CAPTCHAs designed to stop them in their tracks. It is this same technology that enables us to show these Valentine’s Day CAPTCHAs today without reducing their anti-abuse effectiveness.
But that’s not all. Over the last few months, we’ve been working hard to improve the audio CAPTCHA experience. Our adaptive CAPTCHA technology has, in many cases, allowed us to relax audio distortions and serve significantly easier audio CAPTCHAs. We’ve served over 10 million easy audio CAPTCHAs to users worldwide over the last few weeks and have seen great success rates. We hope to continue enhancing our accessibility option in reCAPTCHA in the months to come. Take a listen to this sample of easy audio CAPTCHA:
Your browser does not support this audio
We’re working hard to improve people’s experience with reCAPTCHA without compromising on the spam and abuse protection you’ve come to trust from us. For today, we hope you enjoy our Valentine’s Day gift to you.
Security Reward Programs Update
February 4, 2014
Posted by Eduardo Vela Nava and Michal Zalewski, Google Security Team
From investing our time in doing
security research
to paying for
security bugs
and
patches
, we've really enjoyed and benefited from our involvement with the security community over the past few years. To underscore our commitment, we want to announce yet another increase in payments since we started our reward programs.
Starting today, we will broaden the scope of our
vulnerability reward program
to also include all Chrome apps and extensions developed and branded as "
by Google
." We think developing Chrome extensions securely is relatively easy (given our
security guidelines
are followed), but given that extensions like
Hangouts
and
GMail
are widely used, we want to make sure efforts to keep them secure are rewarded accordingly.
The rewards for each vulnerability will range from the usual
$500
up to
$10,000
USD and will depend on the permissions and the data each extension handles. If you find a vulnerability in any Google-developed Chrome Extensions, please contact us at
goo.gl/vulnz
.
In addition, we decided to substantially increase the reward amounts offered by our
Patch Reward Program
. The program encourages and honors proactive security improvements made to a range of open-source projects that are critical to the health of the Internet in recognition of the painstaking work that's necessary to make a project resilient to attacks.
Our new reward structure is:
$10,000
for complicated, high-impact improvements that almost certainly prevent major vulnerabilities in the affected code.
$5,000
for moderately complex patches that provide convincing security benefits.
Between
$500
and
$1,337
for submissions that are very simple or that offer only fairly speculative gains.
We look forward to ongoing collaboration with the broader security community, and we'll continue to invest in these programs to help make the Internet a safer place for everyone.
Keeping YouTube Views Authentic
February 4, 2014
Posted by Philipp Pfeiffenberger, Software Engineer
YouTube isn’t just a place for videos, it’s a place for meaningful human interaction. Whether it’s views, likes, or comments, these interactions both represent and inform how creators connect with their audience. That’s why we take the accuracy of these interactions very seriously. When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities.
As part of our long-standing effort to keep YouTube authentic and full of meaningful interactions, we’ve begun periodically auditing the views a video has received. While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video’s view count, removing fraudulent views as new evidence comes to light. We don’t expect this approach to affect more than a minuscule fraction of videos on YouTube, but we believe it’s crucial to improving the accuracy of view counts and maintaining the trust of our fans and creators.
As YouTube creators, we ask you to be extra careful when working with third-party marketing firms; unfortunately some of them will sell you fake views. If you need help promoting your video, please review our posts about
working with third party view service providers
and
increasing YouTube views
.
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