The head of Google's Project Zero sees no future for blockchain in security

Google's Project Zero was set up to research improved data security. (Source: SteemKR)

Parisa Tabriz is a director of engineering and also leads Project Zero, a cybersecurity research core, at Google. Tabriz delivered the opening keynote at a recent conference in Las Vegas, in which she dismissed blockchain's potential as a means of securing data.

by Deirdre O Donnell, 2018/08/11

Security Software

Working For Notebookcheck

Are you a techie who knows how to write? Then join our Team!

Currently wanted:
News Editor - Details here

The Black Hat US Conference is a prominent data-security event that featured a director of engineering from Google as an opening keynote speaker. Parisa Tabriz, who also spearheads the company's Project Zero initiative, reportedly addressed the use of blockchain in security while giving this speech. However, the engineer's references to blockchain, which is currently touted as the next big thing in heathcare data protection, were less than fortuitous for the technology. Tabriz indicated that blockchain was still not advanced enough to tackle the security challenges anticipated by Project Zero:

[..] blockchain is not going to solve security problems...we have made great strides in the past decade, but the threat landscape is becoming increasingly complex and our current approach is insufficient.

Tabriz also suggested that a better way forward was to aggregate all the latest data on threats and exploits as part of Project Zero's framework. The engineer called for greater collaboration among vendors in order to achieve this. Finally, Tabriz highlighted the importance of one of Project Zero's most important accomplishments (switching Chrome from majority-HTTP to majority-HTTPS) in protecting against the significant vulnerabilities Spectre and Meltdown.