Tim
We know Google has high hopes for the Internet. They want it to be a wonderful destination, where everyone can feel safe while browsing the millions upon millions of sites out there, purchasing goods, sharing information, and connecting with people from around the world.
Unfortunately, the tech-savvy world we live in is quite dangerous, with cyber attacks, bugs, unauthorized monitoring or communications, and the list goes on. Google has taken a lot of steps, while also investing a lot of money into making their own products secure for all users, but the company is now turning its focus to the Internet as a whole.
Google has announced Project Zero, a group of specially-tasked security researchers who will hunt bugs, track attacks, and begin to report anything they find that could leave people at risk.
Google’s team can explain their goal much more easily than I can, so here is a snippet from their introductory blog post.
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. Yet in sophisticated attacks, we see the use of “zero-day” vulnerabilities to target, for example, human rights activists or to conduct industrial espionage. This needs to stop. We think more can be done to tackle this problem.
Project Zero is our contribution, to start the ball rolling. Our objective is to significantly reduce the number of people harmed by targeted attacks. We’re hiring the best practically-minded security researchers and contributing 100% of their time toward improving security across the Internet.
Google goes on to state that there are no particular bounds for Project Zero. Using the data their researchers accumulate, they will work with vendors to fix dangerous bugs, while also study the techniques, targets, and motivations of would-be cyber attackers.
If you are interested in following Google’s work with Project Zero, you can sub to their blog here.
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