Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

blog.lessonslearned.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 179 posts

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#111

Post by microtonal »

kasey_junk wrote: post #87
microtonal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U2F keys also work on plain Linux with Chrome or Chromium. Though you may have to add some udev rules: https://github.com/Yubico/libu2f-host/blob/master/70-u2f.rul...

The article also states, in the first paragraph, that he wants to use the ChromeOS linux variant because he believes in the security model. > I've come to fully appreciate Google's Chrome OS design. The architecture benefited from a modern view of threat modeling and real-world attacks. This linked in the article explains what he means https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/... .

I read the article. The comment of my parent poster seemed to imply that U2F will only work on Chromebooks and 'vanilla' Linux.

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#112

Post by limeblack »

I have tried using Chrome OS as my main device and I'm basically going to use this post to rant a little. Why does Chrome OS have to use basically a dock like Macs.

I would love and probably use Chrome OS as main device if it looked like this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9MCqo.png

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#113

Post by signifiers »

pilif wrote: post #49

> When things get completely borked (which in two weeks of heavy use only happened a couple of times for me) how are people willing to live with this? I would be furious if I had to lose all my state and (for all intents and purposes) restart my machine multiple times in two weeks. And if this "borking" happens right before or during a presentation (the author was writing about using this setup for giving talks on),…

(author here) I think this was misunderstood. I don't mean the _entire_ Chromebook or OS was unstable -- just the opposite actually. I was referring to having to restart Termux twice in two weeks. Two weeks of constant wake/sleep cycles on and off battery, and plugging/unplugging from an external monitor.

In one case it was a hard kill and I lost one ssh window that had been open for a week. In the other, the Termux gui came up and I never dropped my session (the ssh process never died). I'm not yet familiar enough with the Termux internals to understand that. As far as the Chrome OS stability, it's been one of the most stable machines I own, and I say that as a long-time MBP & Librem owner. 99% of the reboots were intentional as I reinstalled the whole build from Powerwash to Erlang hello world, to make sure I got the details right for the post (and to help troubleshoot some minor install roadbumps a couple of my reviewers experienced).

On the presentations, I joined multiple Hangouts & BlueJeans (WebRTC) video client calls with zero trouble. Signal and Wire voice worked like a champ too.

So while I certainly understand some of the comments here, for _my_ use case — a reliable $160 multi-week travel/burner dev notebook with strong security, I'm more than satisfied. And of course it's not in the same league as my $2K++ MBP. I would never try to run a big JDK app, but for offline Go and Python work, it fits my bill.

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#114

Post by andrepd »

So, the solution to the uncertain threat of airlines picking your luggage and stealing your computer or its data is... giving over your data to somebody that it's certain it's spying on you and whose business model is to comb over your data.

How is this not "you won't catch me, I'll just throw myself off a bridge"?

Also, termux has ~600 packages. Debian has 50,000. Besides the basics, you're liable to need packages you just don't have in termux, which makes it a serviceable environment in a pinch, but not one where you want to do your work on.

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#116

Post by Sargos »

devy wrote: post #55
chx wrote: post #24

In March, we have seen reports of Android Studio possibly coming to Chrome OS. Android Studio would mean IntelliJ IDEA and the entire family of IntelliJ IDEs. That would make this an even better idea.

Is it not currently possible to install any GUI-based IDEs into Chrome OS?

You can currently only use web based IDEs or Android based IDEs in Chrome OS.

There are some good web ones (Cloud9) out there and even a few Android based ones (AIDE). You won't be running any Windows or Linux IDEs though (because Chrome OS is not either of those.)

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#118

Post by serf »

keganunderwood wrote: post #23
serf wrote: post #22

So, be inconvenienced in every aspects important to a dev but gain a bit of confidence in your machine (as long as you trust Big-G)? verified boot seems like the only advantage here. You can buy an ebay business-grade laptop with TPM for 40 bucks USD readily, and they don't require reliance on Google or the requirement that one uses a neutered OS. (yes, yes, it's secure. It's a users' platform. Development on chrome…

I am not saying you're wrong but I'd like some advice on what to buy. The x220 I've never seen dip below $100 with 4GB RAM and a hard disk or at least a caddy. Thank you for your help.

If you want the literal 40 dollar laptop I had in mind, look around for an X60/X60s/X61.

They are old, but they are well equipped and I love their keyboard feel, plus TPM and all that jazz.

Their specs are pretty low-end nowadays, but I find that devs have too varied a range of preferences and tasks to judge what they need too readily.

If you're sitting in a huge IDE or photoshop or otherwise have a strong need for heavy lifting and high resolution during your travels, however, these cheapy business-grade laptops from yesteryear are probably a poor choice.

But I sit in emacs and IRC most of the time with music on -- they are perfect for that.

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#119

Post by kasey_junk »

free_everybody wrote: post #117

Great article! Here's a thought. Why not get a used MacBook Air off Ebay for ~$400? Top notch OS, great support, sturdy design, great battery life...

a) because he was impressed by the ChromeOS security model? b) because he got cloud sync/restore seamlessly out of the box? c) because thats twice as expensive for a used item?

I get that people have nebulous concerns about Google's privacy policy, but he mentions specifically at the beginning of the article that he was interested in the ChromeOS security model. There are very few systems that have a model that matches that for the threats they consider most problematic.

Re: How Chrome OS, Termux, YubiKey and Duo Mobile make for great usable security

#120

Post by free_everybody »

kasey_junk wrote: post #119
free_everybody wrote: post #117

Great article! Here's a thought. Why not get a used MacBook Air off Ebay for ~$400? Top notch OS, great support, sturdy design, great battery life...

a) because he was impressed by the ChromeOS security model? b) because he got cloud sync/restore seamlessly out of the box? c) because thats twice as expensive for a used item? I get that people have nebulous concerns about Google's privacy policy, but he mentions specifically at the beginning of the article that he was interested in the ChromeOS security model. There are very few systems that have a model that match…

Those reasons are understandable. I guess I'm confused why a software developer needs to save $200 on a travel device with I would love it if Android apps could somehow replicate the dev tools of a standard full-featured OS one day. I'm definitely a fan of ChromeOS.
Post reply on HN