Security News

Google is experimenting with increased storage for the browser cache to reduce the performance hit caused by the recently added partitioned cache feature. To prevent these side-channel attacks, Google added a new feature to Chrome 85 that partitions the browser's disk cache so that each site utilizes its own cache that cannot be read by other sites.

Google has blamed a bug in its global authentication system for last week's outage that affected Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, Meet and multiple other Google services. The 47-minute outage last Monday, which severely affected operations at workplaces and schools globally, was caused by a bug in an automated quota management system that powers the Google User ID Service.

According to new code references found in the open-source Chromium platform, Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Brave should soon be able to take advantage of Google's personalized news feed called 'Discover'. Discover is currently accessible via the Google app and Chrome for Android and iOS only, but a new code commit suggests that other Chromium-based browsers should soon be able to take advantage of Discover feed.

As a direct result, users weren't able to access Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and several other Google services for almost an hour on Monday, December 14th. During the outage, users could not send emails via Gmail mobile apps or receive email via POP3 for desktop clients, while YouTube visitors were seeing error messages stating that "There was a problem with the server - Tap to retry." "The majority of authenticated services experienced similar control plane impact: elevated error rates across all Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace APIs and Consoles."

Google has disabled a feature that displays a warning when submitting insecure forms after receiving many complaints from users and website administrators. Google has been focusing on removing mixed-content in Google Chrome, when a secure page loads content from an insecure URL. As part of this initiative, Google rolled out a new feature in Chrome 86 that warns users when submitting insecure forms from a secure page to an insecure URL. Submitting an insecure form would display a warning about the risks of doing so and asks the user if they wish to continue submitting the information.

Google this week announced an extended support period for Android 11 and later devices launching with Qualcomm System-on-Chip models. Currently, devices receive support for a period of three years, which includes security patches, but moving forth users will enjoy one additional year of operating system and security updates.

CloudPassage announced the addition of Google Cloud Platform support for Halo Cloud Secure, the cloud security posture management service of the Halo cloud security platform. With this release, Halo Cloud Secure automatically discovers and inventories cloud assets and resources hosted on GCP, determines their security posture, alerts users to misconfigurations and exposures, and provides best-practice remediation advice.

Google and Qualcomm have linked arms to extend the lifecycle of new Android devices, meaning future phones could receive as many as three major operating system updates provided they're running the latest Snapdragon silicon. "For each SoC model, the SoC manufacturers now needed to create multiple combinations of vendor implementations to support OEMs who would use that chipset to launch new devices and deploy OS upgrades on previously launched devices," said Google's Android Developers Blog.

CloudKnox Security extended support for serverless functions on Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Together, the support for serverless functions and ServiceNow integration underscore CloudKnox's market lead with the most comprehensive support offering in the cloud infrastructure entitlement management segment.

Tufin announced that Tufin SecureCloud now supports the Google Cloud Platform, allowing customers to use SecureCloud to define and monitor compliance with security guardrails. As more organizations adopt a multi-cloud strategy, Tufin customers can now operate secured applications across the three leading cloud providers - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.