INTERNET SEARCH AND ADVERTISING GIANT Google is considering giving websites that use strong encryption preferential placement on its search listings.
Google senior engineer Matt Cutts has hinted at this, having spoken about about such a move. Cutts was talking at the SMX West conference in San Jose, California, when website hacking came up and he talked about Google responses to it.
He said that rewarding secure websites will save Google time whenever a fresh security panic sweeps the internet, according to Time magazine.
"We don't have the time to maybe hold your hand and walk you through and show you exactly where it happened," was what he reportedly said at the SMX event last month.
Cutts has also spoken in private about this, the Wall Street Journal reported. Google has remained mute on the topic.
No one is expecting the change to happen anytime soon, however Google is throwing resources at Heartbleed, which is a much more immediate issue,
Google is one of the few outfits that had prior knowledge of the OpenSSL vulnerability, and now, almost a week later, it is still reacting to it.
In an update to its Online Security blog it suggested that some of its users should establish new encryption keys immediately.
"In light of new research on extracting keys using the Heartbleed bug, we are recommending that Google Compute Engine (GCE) customers create new keys for any affected SSL services. Google Search Appliance (GSA) customers should also consider creating new keys after patching their GSA," it wrote yesterday.
"Engineers are working on a patch for the GSA, and the Google Enterprise Support Portal will be updated with the patch as soon as it is available."
In March, following PRISM revelations, Google began to step up encryption of its services, and applied extra security to email, searches and servers.
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