Google Launches Anti-DDoS Service ‘Project Shield’

As it seeks to fight various forms of censorship, Google has announced Project Shield, an anti-distributed denial of service (DDoS) service.

It has invited those running independent news, human rights and elections-related websites to sign up for a trial. “Project Shield is an initiative to use Google’s infrastructure to protect free expression online,” a message from the Internet giant read.

Google fighting DDoS and censorship

“The service currently combines Google’s DDoS mitigation technologies and Page Speed Service (PSS), which allow websites to serve their content through Google to be better protected from DDoS attacks.”

It appears Project Shield will be something akin to a content delivery network like that offered by CloudFlare, using data centres to absorb spurious requests when DDoS strikes hit.

Google has also launched uProxy – a “browser extension under development that lets friends provide each other with a trusted pathway to the web, helping protect an Internet connection from filtering, surveillance or misdirection”.

Developed by the University of Washington and Brave New Software, it will set up private connections for users, but Google hasn’t said how traffic will be routed to protect users.

Alongside Arbor Networks, Google has also launched a visualisation of global DDoS traffic, showing plenty of action in the US and China. See below for the map:

How well do you know Internet security? Try our quiz!