The word "Linux" doesn't refer to anything, other than maybe the kernel. Chrome OS is linux. But it's a massively stripped down "distribution" that has a radical design, including the fact that it will ONLY run if all of the cryptographic checks are verified from the root of trust. That root of trust is Google's massively large PKI public key that is burned into the firmware. For a journalist in the field, that's a great reassurance. Take your Chromebook to China. The Chinese government can not alter what you are running without either (a) modifying your hardware, which means they take possession of it for a period of time and manage to do something that is tricky to do (i.e. circumstances under which you'd no longer trust your computer anyways) or (b) you will know they tried to hack it and your Chromebook will refuse to boot, and will instead wipe away the hacks and update itself and won't boot unless the update is a legitimate one signed by Google. Yes, you can't compare Chrome OS's attack surface to a typical linux distribution, or even a highly customized linux install which doesn't have the hardware root of trust. On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Nadim Kobeissi wrote:

The biggest (and very important) difference between Linux and Chromebooks is the hugely smaller attack surface.

NK

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Brian Conley wrote:

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Andreas,

Plenty of Syrians do have internet access, and use it on a regular basis.

Also, lack of appropriateness for one use-case doesn't necessitate lack of appropriateness across the board.

Linux is a great solution for many use cases, but as has been elaborated, quite a terrible one for many others.

Brian

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 7:44 AM, Andreas Bader wrote:

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Nadim, I'm with you. I'm not sure it's the perfect solution for everyone, but like Nathan said, if you already trust Google, I think it's a good option.

On 6 February 2013 07:12, Andreas Bader wrote:

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Why don't you use an old thinkpad or something with Linux, you have

On 02/06/2013 04:24 PM, Tom Ritter wrote: the

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same price like a Chromebook but more control over the system. And you don't depend on the 3G and Wifi net. We started with the notion of Linux, and we were attracted to Chromebooks for a bunch of reasons. Going back to Linux loses all the things we were attracted to.

- ChromeOS's attack surface is infinitely smaller than with Linux - The architecture of ChromeOS is different from Linux - process separation through SOP, as opposed to no process separation at all - ChromeOS was *designed* to have you logout, and hand the device over to someone else to login, and get no access to your stuff. Extreme Hardware attacks aside, it works pretty well. - ChromeOS's update mechanism is automatic, transparent, and basically foolproof. Having bricked Ubuntu and Gentoo systems, the same is not true of Linux. - Verified Boot, automatic FDE, tamper-resistant hardware

Something I'm curious about is, if any less-popular device became popular amoung the activist community - would the government view is as an indicator of interest? Just like they block Tor, would they block Chromebooks? It'd have to get pretty darn popular first though.

-tom --

But you can't use it for political activists e.g. in Syria because of its dependence on the internet connection. This fact is authoritative. For Europe and USA and so on it might be a good solution. -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech

--

Brian Conley

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