Project Zero: When then-17-year-old George Hotz became the world's first hacker to break AT&T's lock on the iPhone in 2007, the companies ignored him and tried to fix the bugs he had discovered. When he later broke the Playstation 3, Sony sued him and only accepted a settlement when Hotz agreed to never break again product of Sony.
Then Hotz disassembled the defenses of the Google Chrome operating system. His company paid 150.000 dollars as a fee. Two months later, Chris Evans, a Google security technician, sent him an e-mail: Did Mr Hotz want to join an elite full-time hacker team that will chase vulnerabilities in every popular product of the company?
So Google is publicly revealing the team (via Wired), known as Project Zero, a team of top security researchers whose sole mission is to identify and fix the most insidious security vulnerabilities. These secret hackable bugs, known in the security industry as "zero-day", are exploited by criminals, or state-sponsored hackers and intelligence services. By outsourcing this project to researchers, Google hopes to build a strong security infrastructure in its products.
Chris Evans
Google's security researcher Chris Evans is in charge of hiring top talent to run Project Zero.
"People deserve to use the internet without fear that a vulnerability could ruin their privacy," says Evans. He is a British security researcher and led the former Chrome security team before taking the helm of Project Zero.
Στο Project Zero έχει ήδη προσλάβει μια ομάδας hackers υψηλού προφίλ που εργαζόταν για την Google: Ο Νεοζηλανδός Ben Hawkes έχει ανακαλύψει δεκάδες σφάλματα σε λογισμικό όπως το Adobe Flash και Microsoft Office μόνο το 2013. Ο Tavis Ormandy, ένας Άγγλος ερευνητής ο οποίος έχει τη φήμη σαν ένας από τους πιο παραγωγικούς κυνηγούς bug στον κλάδο, ανήκει και αυτός στην dream team. Ο Αμερικάνος hacker George Hotz, ο οποίος έσπασε το Chrome OS της Google και κέρδισε στον διαγωνισμό hacking Pwnium τον περασμένο Μάρτιο, θα είναι και αυτός οικότροφος της ομάδας. Ο Ελβετός Brit Ian Beer είναι στην μυστική ομάδα ασφαλείας της Google τους τελευταίους μήνες, από τότε που ανακάλυψε έξι bug βρίσκει στο iOS της Apple , το OSX και το Safari.
Evans says the team is not complete even hiring continues. Its aim is to have more than ten full time researchers in its management shortly. Most will work at a desk in Mountain View, using hunting bugs, but also with the hacker's pure intuition.
Evans insists that Project Zero is "mostly altruistic." But he himself has an enticing level of freedom to work on difficult ones problems ασφάλειας με ελάχιστους περιορισμούς. Μπορεί επίσης να χρησιμοποιήσει την στρατολόγηση που θα φέρει κορυφαία ταλέντα στους κόλπους της Google, όπου μπορούν αργότερα να προχωρήσουν σε άλλες ομάδες. Και όπως συμβαίνει με όλα τα άλλα projects της Google, η εταιρεία υποστηρίζει, ότι αυτό τα benefits they will be collected by the end user of the internet. After all, safe and happy end users click more on Google ads.
