Jigsaw is the name given to Google's cyber security unit, which unit has been saddled with the task of developing bespoke privacy applications, with the likes of Project Shield and Intra privacy app among their creation.
The company has launched several technology products to help in the fight against government censorship, such products includes: Project Shield (which protects websites against DDoS attacks), Digital Attack Map (live data visualization that maps DDoS attacks) and uProxy (new browser extension that allows contacts share trusted pathway to the web).
The latest offering from their stable is Intra, an anti-censorship and privacy app used in checkmating hostile government regimes from censoring the internet and manipulating traffic.
Intra app is designed to thwart common techniques employed by governments in censoring the internet, and has been in testing with activists in Venezuela, as Google had wanted to keep the trial to a small group.
It effectively takes on Domain Name System (DNS) manipulation, also the most common technique employed in the spread of malware, by creating an encrypted connection between your smartphone and the DNS servers, which makes it more difficult to intercept the traffic.
And Intra will automatically point the device to Google's DNS server, but you can change it to some other servers like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 via the settings.
Albeit, this encrypted connection comes by default on Android 9 Pie, but Google wants the other millions of users on Android that don't have the latest software to have that same protection by releasing the app.
The app is said to be compatible with about 99 percent of Android phones, which is quite comforting since over 80 percent of Android's users are still stuck with the old version of the mobile operating system.
No comments