All news with #google tag

🤖 Apigee API Hub and API Gateway now integrate to centralize dispersed API metadata and make specs agent-ready. A new API Gateway–API Hub sync brings OpenAPI definitions and gateway configurations into a single control plane without changing existing services or client behavior. The spec boost add-on analyzes gaps and produces a specboost-draft that enriches specs with examples, parameter validation, and error details. Teams can review boosted and original specs side-by-side before adopting changes.

🛡️ Royal Hansen, VP Engineering at Google, outlines how Google Cloud is confronting emergent cybersecurity risks as AI reshapes the threat landscape. He emphasizes AI-powered malware, supply-chain and training-data poisoning, and governance challenges tied to loss-of-control of AI infrastructure. Google is advancing controls—tamper-proof provenance, model-level protections, Identity and Access Management, and treating prompts like code—while rolling out agentic workflows to augment SOC teams. The post also consolidates recent threat intelligence, incident responses, and practitioner resources.

🔓 Google Cloud API keys that were once treated as non-sensitive can now authenticate to the Gemini generative AI assistant, creating a new attack path where keys embedded in client-side JavaScript expose private assistant data. TruffleSecurity discovered nearly 2,800 live, publicly accessible keys across sectors — including financial firms and a Google product — by scanning the November 2025 Common Crawl. Attackers who copy exposed keys can call Gemini endpoints to retrieve data or generate costly API usage; developers should audit projects for the Generative Language API, rotate exposed keys immediately, and use detection tools to prevent abuse.

🚀 The preview of the Spanner columnar engine enables low-latency serving of Apache Iceberg lakehouse data with Spanner’s horizontal scale and strong consistency. It adds a columnar storage layer and vectorized execution to accelerate analytical scans — Google cites up to 200× faster scans — while isolating heavy analytical queries from transactional workloads. The feature supports on-demand columnar conversion, automatic query routing, and reverse ETL integrations with BigQuery, Databricks, Snowflake and Oracle to make curated analytical data available for real-time applications.

🚀 PayPal completed a multi-year, large-scale migration of more than 300 petabytes of analytics data into BigQuery on Google Cloud to create a unified data foundation for generative AI. The initiative consolidated disparate platforms — including Teradata, Hadoop, Redshift, and Snowflake — and reduced vendor complexity. PayPal automated migration tasks, used live dashboards, and integrated FinOps to maintain zero business downtime while enabling faster queries and much fresher data for AI model training.

🖼️ Nano Banana 2 is Google’s latest image-generation and editing model, delivering Pro-level image quality and fast iteration for enterprise creative workflows. Powered by real-time web search and integrated with Gemini API in Vertex AI, it provides accurate, localized visuals plus premium features like text rendering, translations, and upscaling to 2K/4K. Enterprise-ready provenance is supported via SynthID and interoperable C2PA Content Credentials to surface how AI was used.

🔒 Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and partners disrupted UNC2814, a prolific cyber-espionage campaign with suspected links to China that operated since 2017 and targeted governments and telecommunications across multiple continents. Researchers identified a novel backdoor, GridTide, which abused Google Sheets as a covert command-and-control channel to execute shell commands and transfer files. Google terminated attacker-controlled Cloud Projects, disabled accounts, revoked Sheets API access used for C2, and has notified victims while offering remediation support.

🛡️ Google disrupted a China-linked espionage group that repurposed Google Sheets as a covert command-and-control channel to manage a custom backdoor tracked as UNC2814 and named GRIDTIDE. The backdoor abused legitimate Sheets API calls to send commands, retrieve stolen data, poll spreadsheets frequently, and wipe rows to erase traces. Mandiant flagged unusual activity on a CentOS server, leading to discovery of intrusions at 53 organizations across 42 countries focused on telecoms and government systems. Google terminated attacker Cloud projects, revoked API access, sinkholed domains, and published IOCs.

🔒 Android is expanding its AI-driven Scam Detection protections for calls and messages, bringing on-device Gemini models to more Pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices. A real-world example describes a Pixel user who avoided a convincing bank scam after receiving a timely Scam Detection warning during the call. Google Messages protections now cover 20+ countries and multiple languages and have improved detection for sophisticated threats like job-offer and romance “pig butchering” scams. Processing occurs on-device, data aren’t stored or shared, and the feature is off by default and excluded for contacts.

🔒 Google and industry partners disrupted infrastructure used by suspected China-linked espionage group UNC2814, which deployed a C-based backdoor named GRIDTIDE that abuses the Google Sheets API to conceal command-and-control traffic. GRIDTIDE supports file upload/download and arbitrary shell execution and was observed on endpoints containing PII. Google terminated attacker-controlled Cloud projects, disabled abused accounts, and is notifying impacted organizations while offering support.

🔐 Google’s Threat Intelligence Group, Mandiant, and partners disrupted a global espionage campaign attributed to a suspected Chinese actor tracked as UNC2814 that infiltrated telecom firms and government agencies across dozens of countries. The actor deployed a new C-based backdoor named GRIDTIDE that abused the Google Sheets API for covert command-and-control, authenticating with a hardcoded service account key and polling spreadsheet cells for instructions. GRIDTIDE supports execution, upload and download commands via URL-safe Base64 exchanges and hides output in sheet cells; Google and partners disabled cloud projects, revoked API access, sinkholed domains, and offered victim support.

🛡️ Google Threat Intelligence Group, Mandiant, and partners executed a coordinated disruption against a global espionage campaign attributed to UNC2814 that abused cloud services for covert command and control. Investigators identified a novel C-based backdoor called GRIDTIDE that uses Google Sheets APIs as a high-availability C2 channel, protected by an AES-128-CBC key and service account credentials. Actions included terminating attacker-controlled Google Cloud projects, disabling accounts and Sheets API access, sinkholing infrastructure, and publishing IOCs and detection guidance to support defenders.

⚠️ A short experiment demonstrates how easy it is to poison AI outputs by publishing a single fabricated webpage. The author wrote an entirely false article titled "The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs," inventing events and rankings; within 24 hours Google Gemini and ChatGPT had incorporated the falsehoods, while Claude resisted. The incident underscores the fragility of trust in AI-derived answers.

🕒 Firefly is a software-driven clock synchronization system from Google that achieves nanosecond-level timing across data center NICs using commodity hardware. It separates fast internal NIC-to-NIC consensus from external UTC alignment and builds consensus over a d-regular random graph. Practical techniques—RTT filtering, path profiling, and optional switch/NIC features—reduce jitter and asymmetry. It yields consistent sub-10ns internal alignment while scaling to large fabrics.

🔒 Three former Google engineers and one spouse were indicted in U.S. federal court for allegedly stealing trade secrets and transferring sensitive files, including materials related to Google's Tensor processor, to unauthorized locations reportedly including Iran. The defendants — Samaneh Ghandali, Mohammadjavad Khosravi and Soroor Ghandali — are accused of exfiltrating documents to third‑party channels, copying files to personal and employer devices, and concealing their actions. They were arrested in San Jose after Google detected suspicious activity and notified law enforcement; the indictment carries multiple counts with significant prison and fine exposures.

🛡️ ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko has identified PromptSpy, the first known Android malware to call a generative AI model at runtime, leveraging Google's Gemini to adapt persistence on different devices. The malware submits an XML dump of the current UI plus a chat prompt to Gemini, receives JSON-formatted instructions, and uses the Accessibility Service to pin the app in Recent Apps in a loop until confirmed. Its primary payload is a VNC-based spyware module that can capture PINs, record unlock patterns and screen activity, take screenshots, and report foreground apps. To block removal it overlays invisible UI elements over uninstall or permission controls; victims must reboot into Safe Mode to remove it.

🛡️ ESET researchers disclosed PromptSpy, the first Android malware observed to integrate Google's Gemini generative AI into its execution flow and achieve persistence. The malware assigns Gemini the persona of an 'Android automation assistant,' sends an XML dump of the current screen, and receives JSON step-by-step instructions that are executed via accessibility services. PromptSpy captures lockscreen data, records screens and video, deploys a VNC module for remote access, and blocks uninstallation using invisible overlays while communicating with a hard-coded C2.

🔒 In 2025 Google reports expanded AI-driven, multi-layered defenses across Google Play and Android, preventing 1.75 million policy-violating apps and banning over 80,000 developer accounts. The company integrated generative AI into review workflows, boosted Play Protect scanning to 350 billion app checks daily, and blocked 266 million risky sideload installation attempts. Developer tools, verification, and pre-review checks aim to reduce friction while raising security and privacy standards.

🛡️ Google says it blocked more than 1.75 million apps from being published on Google Play in 2025 and denied over 255,000 apps access to sensitive user data. The company also banned over 80,000 developer accounts and strengthened detection by integrating generative AI into its review process to identify evolving malicious patterns. Play Protect scanned an estimated 350 billion app instances daily and flagged over 27 million malicious sideloaded apps, while the Play Integrity API processed more than 20 billion checks per day.

🔒 In 2025 Google deployed advanced AI-powered defenses across Google Play to stop apps that cause real-world harm, preventing over 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published and banning more than 80,000 malicious developer accounts. We expanded Google Play Protect to scan over 350 billion Android apps daily and rolled out real-time protections including in-call scam defenses. Together these measures strengthened the Play store and the broader Android ecosystem by prioritizing automated detection, rapid enforcement, and on-device user safety.