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Biggest impact will be AWS if they manage to actually widely distribute keys. We'll see. If every account that paid for support got a free key, that'd move the needle.

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Eric Geller

@ericgeller

Aug 25, 2021

Embargo has lifted on WH cyber meeting announcements. * Microsoft: offering $150m worth of security help to govt agencies * Google: donating $100m to help orgs that secure open-source software * Amazon: free security tokens for AWS users * IBM: cyber training for 150k people

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InsanityBit

@InsanityBit

Aug 26, 2021

Interestingly, seems that the vast majority of responses disagree. 100m+ for "security" is not real value. Free tokens that can be applied to any service (not just AWS) is (potentially) huge and, most importantly, addresses a REAL threat, not just "make security better".

InsanityBit

@InsanityBit

Aug 26, 2021

IMO AWS showed everyone else up here. Addressed a real problem, helps their direct customers be safe across services, didn't have to spend 100M+ on nothing.

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If Google gave money to

@OSTIFofficial

or something like this, or funded development/donated to critical infrastructure, that's not a bad contribution IMO. Lifting OpenSSL out of its previously underfunded state was a massive boost to everyone's security (for example).

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and

Funding insecure infrastructure rather than replacing it with secure infrastructure isn't a long-term solution. It may make things worse rather than making them better. No amount of funding is going to make OpenSSL into a project focused on security/correctness like BoringSSL.

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I don't think what they intend to do with that money is simply funding critical open source infrastructure. I think they intend for most of it to be used on efforts like the Rust TLS stack they're funding via ISRG. abetterinternet.org/post/preparing At least, I hope that's their plan.

8:23 PM · Aug 26, 2021Twitter Web App

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and

Yeah, it's going to depend on where they allocate the money. I didn't dig deep, admittedly.

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Similarly, see opentitan.org which is an open hardware secure element they could use to replace their Titan secure elements in Pixels and their servers, but available for others too. Google does fairly aimlessly throw money at projects but has more focused efforts too.

opentitan.org

Open source silicon root of trust (RoT) | OpenTitan

The first open source project building a transparent, high-quality reference design and integration guidelines for silicon root of trust (RoT) chips

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I don't think funding OpenSSL was good for security in the long-term. It hurt interest, adoption and funding for better replacements. It only delays the inevitable which is that a poorly designed and written security critical component in an unsafe language needs to be replaced.

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