Linux for Chromebooks: Secure Development (Google I/O ’19)

What Hacker News said

Recommends est31 · 2020-03 · on “Fixing the Desktop Linux Security Model”

Chrome OS is a very secure Linux distro. While the base system is very restricted, they also support Linux sandboxes, making it secure for you to use the computer both for online banking and for downloading random code from the internet. Check out the talk "Linux for Chromebooks: Secure Development": [this video]

Cites jt2190 · 2019-05 · on “All Chromebooks will also be Linux laptops going forward”

Video of the talk: Linux for Chromebooks, (A.K.A Crostini): Secure Development presented by Sudha Broslawsky, Tom Buckley, and Dylan Reid at Google I/O 2019 [this video] Some technical details: * Container: Crostini (default is Debian 9) * Guest: Termina VM: LXD [1], Linux Kernel * Host: CrOS: crosvm, Linux Kernel Drivers are run in "minijails" to minimize exposure. Files are shared from container to OS via 9P [2]. Google is calling theirs "9S" Edit: I think this in-depth document may be up to date: "Running Custom Containers Under Chrome OS" [LINK] [1] from Canonical, see [LINK] [2] [LINK]

Cites pjmlp · 2019-08 · on “Banned C standard library functions in Git source code”

Well, you can see how they are locking it down with containers sandboxing from an IO talk, by making use of gVisor and a Rust based containers. "Linux for Chromebooks: Secure Development" [this video]

Cites pjmlp · 2019-08 · on “What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time?”

Regarding ChromeOS: "Linux for Chromebooks: Secure Development" > Learn how Linux for Chromebooks (Crostini) gives you a secure sandbox for development. Through a variety of demos, this talk will explain the architecture underlying Linux for Chromebooks and the design decisions that keep it easy to use. [this video] And Android: "Adopting the Arm Memory Tagging Extension in Android" [LINK] " [LINK] [LINK] "Improving Stability with Private C/C++ Symbol Restrictions in Android N" [LINK] "Android NDK Native APIs" [LINK]

Cites est31 · 2019-09 · on “Parents Thought They Wanted Tech in Every Classroom, Now They’re Not So Sure”

You can now have sandboxes where you can install desktop tools without having to enable stuff like developer mode: [this video] Sandboxing this stuff away is in general a good idea for protecting "normal" users. People often want to install pirated games or whatever and that's abused as a vector to get malware onto those devices. If that's not enough you can install entirely different operating systems and even bootloaders (if you want to).

Cites cromwellian · 2019-09 · on “A Message about iOS Security”

Back when Chrome was based on WebKit, IIRC Chrome team found and fixed oodles and oodles of bugs in WebKit, because WebKit wasn't even using fuzzing, or not enough fuzzing. Even as late as 2017, fuzzing was still finding significantly more security issues in Safari than other browsers: [LINK] Also, when discussing iCloud, you need to distinguish between the backend service, and the frontend service. There have been significant CVEs found in the front-end client. Apple doesn't run many front end Web services, so there's less to exploit. They also don't allow you to host executable code like AWS, Azure, and GCP, so the attack surface is much more confined. That Google has exposed their infrast

Cites est31 · 2020-05 · on “Stealing secrets from developers using WebSockets”

You're likely not even safe from this if you are using Chrome OS. It does sandbox the localhost web server [1] [2], but it does not restrict access to it from the host. [1]: [this video] [2]: [LINK]

Cites pjmlp · 2023-08 · on “ChromeOS is splitting the browser from the OS, getting more Linux-y”

That is a VM, similar in concept to WSL on Windows, with the difference that the host is also Linux based. "Linux for Chromebooks: Secure Development" [this video] [LINK] [LINK]