The Google H1 Fritz Chip
loper-os.org
The Google H1 Fritz Chip
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#2The author’s writing style makes them a little difficult to follow, but the details I can find seem to check out.
Does anyone know which Google/ChromeOS features this chip is used for, or what the justification for it is?
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#3From the article this is part of any modern Chromebook:
The Cr50 device is a classic “Fritz chip” — i.e. a hardware “policeman”, built into a computing device [...], so as to specifically and deliberately act against the purchaser’s interests, by subverting the Laws of Sane Computing in these three ways:
Prevention of the full control of the machine by its physical owner, typically by inhibiting attempts to install modified firmware. [...]
Enablement of one or more types of “NOBUS” back door (Official NSA terminology! “No One But US“, [...]
Prevention of a clueful hardware owner’s attempts to “jailbreak” — to disable, remove, or circumvent the Fritz chip itself.
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#4The author’s writing style makes them a little difficult to follow, but the details I can find seem to check out. Does anyone know which Google/ChromeOS features this chip is used for, or what the justification for it is?
It's the new TPM? The old one had a (now patched) firmware bug, which newer Chromebooks like the Pixelbook don't seem to be vulnerable to:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/tpm_firmware_update
Edit: this is what Chrome devices use it for https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/tpm-usa...
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#5The author’s writing style makes them a little difficult to follow, but the details I can find seem to check out. Does anyone know which Google/ChromeOS features this chip is used for, or what the justification for it is?
Seriously. The hardware aspects are interesting, but the author's insistence on interpreting the situation as some sort of grand conspiracy theory, and using derogatory terms like "open sores" at every opportunity, makes the article nigh-unreadable.
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#6How can I avoid or circumvent this type of technology when purchasing a new computer or phone?
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#7Off Topic — the author forgot to upgrade their reCaptcha integration.
Any calls to Google reCaptcha v1 API will not work after March 31, 2018 [1].
[1] https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/faq#what-happen...
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#8If this turns out to be accurate it would be _quite_ the stain on the otherwise very nice Cross ecosystem.
I would like to see some more details.
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#9Fact: The Snowden leaks confirmed the long suspicion that governments work to backdoor software and hardware at an insane level. Related fact: Governments also try crazy hard to bust into insecure, vulnerable devices to compromise them.
So we have this really annoying catch 22, where people like this author report on real security and tamper protection systems as bad -- yet without them, the device would actually be prone to different actors attempting to own devices remotely.
Every security mechanism in place on modern computing hardware can be viewed as being either cryptographically important or encumbered against users. The fact of the matter is that it's extremely hard to build a platform that's resistant to all types of attack without also encumbering real users and real benefits of device ownership.
At some point, I just want to throw my hands up and ask why people continue to buy these devices if they dislike them so much. I can understand wanting to tinker and wanting to hack. But voluntarily forking over money just to complain about why that platform isn't an open box amazes me. It's plenty easier to buy a hackable and open by default platform than it is to buy a closed one and try to turn it into an open one.
Re: The Google H1 Fritz Chip
#10The author’s writing style makes them a little difficult to follow, but the details I can find seem to check out. Does anyone know which Google/ChromeOS features this chip is used for, or what the justification for it is?
Seriously. The hardware aspects are interesting, but the author's insistence on interpreting the situation as some sort of grand conspiracy theory, and using derogatory terms like "open sores" at every opportunity, makes the article nigh-unreadable.
Beyond the rethoric, the substance is not very different from RMS' arguments against TPMs, which must be some 15 years old now. You'll have a hard time buying a device today without such a chip.