Google Forces Websites to Encrypt

[Mani]

According to the recent news, the tech giant might tweak its search algorithm in favor of encrypted websites in order to encourage better online security. The idea was revealed by Matt Cutts, an engineer in charge of liaising with site designers and minimizing spam in search. He explained that if everybody adopted encryption, the third parties would face difficulties in spying on Internet users. An engineer emphasized that encouraging encryption was very important: once websites had been hacked, Google won’t be able to find out exactly how it happened.

Apparently, Google’s discussions on changing the algorithm are at an early stage at the moment, with Cutts being a major evangelist for the idea. When reached for comments, the company said it has nothing to announce yet. It is known that Google uses its search algorithm to both encourage and discourage practices among web developers.

For instance, websites known to have malicious software go down in Google rankings, as well as those that load very slowly. Overall, Google has more than 200 “signals†helping them determine search rankings, and it doesn’t discuss most of them.

Once Google adds encryption to the list, it can be a huge incentive for websites to adopt it more widely. Unfortunately, the first websites to adopt it will surely be those dodgy ones that are designed to game Google, rather than sites with valuable content. The search giant has been encrypting more of its services for a while now, including Gmail and Google Search. In addition, it started encrypting traffic between its data centers after it became known that the National Security Agency was exploiting vulnerabilities in its infrastructure.

All this undoubtedly depends on the encryption working. A few days ago, it was revealed that a popular encryption scheme OpenSSL contained a vulnerability allowing hackers to attack a network and steal personal data without any trace.