One of the main problems is...

zogger

Thu Oct 04 18:03:24 -0700 2007

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...99% (whatever, a huge number) of the people out there running regular desktop or laptop computers need a secure *internet appliance that doesn't suck*. We have good enough tech now to make appliances that are fast and functional and reboot into a fresh clean install as often as they are turned on and off. Live CDs and enough ram, you don't need a permanent hard drive install.

Previous appliances have sucked, web Tv-no mouse?? Whut the heck? and so on, anemic processors, dismal RAM amount, frankly just plain wrong OS, no apps.

Times change. You can have a full featured computer like experience that is basically immune to any permanent infestation, with no hoop jumping required, they could make it dogsquat simple, literally an on off button like any other appliance.

That, or what I have said previously, take the training wheels away from the software for big bucks industry and FORCE them to provide warranties, especially as to suitability for use. If it goes on the internet, and they advertise it as such, it should be more or less as immune as possible, nothing like it is today where apparently it is still incredibly easy to get infected. You cannot force, nor expect, regular joe computer users to be advanced administrators and computer experts. heck, even schneier here says so. that's just a ridiculous notion.. These huge companies sitting on shiploads of cash, that make hundreds of billions of dollars,plus software and computing being decades old now,means time to get real, "the computer business" needs to be treated like any other business that offers goods or services, no more EULA get out of all responsibilities stuff just because they claim it. That's just ludicrous in 2007. 1957, OKbaby steps still, vacuum tube jobs, etc, 67, still working on things but mainframes were well established by then, 77, lot of small personal computers out there, 87, untold millions, 97, global, hundreds of millions, so many e-waste had become a problem, now 2007?? They still get to claim training wheel status as in "we can't make secure computers, and we have a EULA that gives us legal protection". Huh??

Nope, ain't buying that excuse anymore. Make it suitable for purpose or get another job, someone will bingo to how to do it without this massive never ending just getting worse daily "security" problem. I mean, how many more "user just clicked on a link" and "cross site that dang buffer done overflowed again and injected me with crap" bogus stuff has to go on before people will notice that this emperor has no clothes on?

This entrenched computing system with business and ISPs and no government oversight deal as we have it now is hideously broken and has been for years and years.

And one obvious way to make it cheaper and more robust and functional and more secure is to make *internet appliances* where nothing can be installed permanently or rewritten over, no bugs possible, not for long anyway. simple reboot, back to clean machine if it had gotten nailed. No anti virus needed, nothing.. Those that want full bore computers, fine, swell, who cares, but accept responsibility for it, including "maintaining an attractive nuisance" if your box-desktop or server- gets zombied and spews spam or is part of a DDoS attack or something.. Other folks/most folks I bet would be thrilled with machines that surfed, emailed, chatted and did media and games without getting pwned, hosed, compromised, trojaned, infected, neglected, selected and dejected.

This security stuff is just *old* now. The various ways the smart guys are trying to fight it, as just a normal non leet user looking in, are looking more like a perpetual jobs program than addressing the real issues. It's the computing equivalent of the anti anti missile missile anti missile missile anti missile program, it's never gonna end doing it the way they are trying to do it now.

Or..I am completely wrong. If so, how and why? What am I missing here? How are we really any better off now-as a global society here and now right this second, the way everything is, not some pie in the sky way it might be or could be,-than we were, say, 5 years ago? I am seeing not much of anything different at all, same old exploit dujour, now in the tens of millions of infected and online computers and so sophisticated the main gurus are sorta stumped.

One of the main problems is...

phred14

Thu Oct 04 18:46:59 -0700 2007

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Naah, if it's legislated, we'll be required to abide by bizarre TOS and run ONLY Microsoft Windows.  (maybe Mac)  You'll need a "commercial computing license" to operate Linux or BSD on a network, and ISPs won't allow that kind of connection at residential prices.

One of the main problems is...

rubycodez

Fri Oct 05 07:01:38 -0700 2007

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I've been fooling my ISPs and their support desk that I'm running a single (ha) windows (heeheehee) computer hooked right into their provided box (bwahahahaha) for years.

just like they think I have a normal telephone plugged in and not a homemade voip pbx

non volatile thin client

rubycodez

Thu Oct 04 18:47:06 -0700 2007

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there are types of "thin client" computers that can do just what you're saying if you configure that mode, nothing persists after reboot except original boot image. where I work we sell 'em as part of a secure remote office solution, both windows and linux flavored from one of the  big iron vendors.

 but the user's data (documents, spreadsheets, emails, etc.) do have to be stored somewhere else.  Some places do provide free specialized storage (e.g. gmail) though not general purpose (sure, I could whip up some code to turn gmail into a kind of kooky filesystem even divying up large files into attachment chunks, but google would probably sue my @zz for a gigabuck).  google was futzing with the idea of storage and so were some other of its competitors but I don't know if that's still on and I don't believe it was considered for free.

but say  a certain amount of storage came as part of an ISPs service, very nice for downloading because that doesn't even involve your local connection, just a move into "your area".  As the size of disks increase from huge to absurdly huge, it should become very cheap at bulk prices to provide gigabytes (soon TB) of robustly replicated space.

non volatile thin client

Charles E Hill

Thu Oct 04 19:57:10 -0700 2007

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And those thin clients usually have the OS and applications in firmware.  One hole and there is nothing to stop a worm from simply infecting one anew when it is powered on.

A better step would be the firmware contains nothing but a PXE boot, which boots thru your broadband connection.  Nothing really on the box to corrupt.

The ENTIRE OS is loaded thru encrypted DHCP, with the file system being NFS or something similar.  With a fast link, this isn't as slow as people think.  Add a crapload of USB ports so they can add local peripherals, and one of those 13-in-1 card readers.

This way, the OS and applications can be professionally managed.  No excuses for not patching.  The end user never has to do it.  The next time they turn on their "PC" it boots the latest and greatest.

I'm in the middle of setting up a Linux system for my 83-year-old grandmother to use.  It is a lot more of a challenge than I thought, as there are a ton of details.  I chose Linux for two reasons -- I can support it, and trust me, I'm the one she will call with an issue; and she isn't going to get a worm or virus.

I'm chronicling the details over on my Slashdot journal.

http://slashdot.org/~chill/journal/180971
http://slashdot.org/~chill/journal/183733

non volatile thin client

rubycodez

Thu Oct 04 20:53:30 -0700 2007

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I haven't heard of any exploitable holes causing corruption to the  boot image, just not what existing malware is designed to do.  some clever checksum and verification of image might reduce the risk to near zero if such systems were to become common as home computers and thus an attractive target.  

You idea would work with real broadband, 10Mbytes/Sec and up, not the crummy 1.4 MByte/sec or lower much of the U.S. gets stuck with.  Or go a little farther with vnc appliance to remotely managed vm that only has read access to common operating system.  then popular downloads could even be cached by the ISP's SAN disk arrays, imagine "downloading" something gigabytes big and popular in an instant!

Linux for Grandma would have made a good technocrat article, worth more than twenty Falko Thomas articles. 

The best thing my brother did to support our dad/mom was install a means for remote access so he could get in there to keep eye on health, advise them on confusing prompts and also do heavy cleanup after big oops.  They're on Winders so not my problem. 

non volatile thin client

Charles E Hill

Fri Oct 05 05:18:52 -0700 2007

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I was thinking more of the firmware image has Program X, v2.1 which has a known hole and there is no easy way to update the firmware.  Thus, it is susceptible every time it boots.

You're right, I'm thinking of 10 MBps or faster.  SpeakEasy is rolling out ADSL2 in my neighborhood with download speeds from 8-15 MBps.  Comcast advertises 8 MBps or faster.  Verizon is rolling our FIOS and AT&T is doing UVerse.  It all hinges on some of these guys being able to do PROPER QoS.  Probably a little much to ask from the likes of Comcast.

When I finish the next segment of "Linux for Grandma", maybe I'll post it to Technocrat.

non volatile thin client

phred14

Fri Oct 05 06:38:50 -0700 2007

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I'm another one of those "Linux for Grandma" types, except it's Linux for my 80+ yo mother.

One variation I have that may be of interest is that I have her email on a local IMAP server.  One thing I've learned is that if it's in her account, and she has write access, she can mess it up.  "Grandma Linux" is largely an exercise in learning how much you can lock down a system, yet still keep it usable.  Separating email from the account, using IMAP, is one of those little tricks.  Making sure that email is kept in maildir format instead of mbox or mbx is another.  (Less prone to corruption.) 

One of my problems is that every now and then, despite what I tell her, or how many "safety suggestions" I make, she just "gets frustrated and unplugs the stupid thing!"  A Windows Registry wouldn't last 2 weeks, and obviously her filesystems are journaled.  The other problem is education.  There's no better way to train than to sit down together at the keyboard.  But I live 600+ miles away, and when we visit she wants to visit, not spend time at the computer.  So it's really rough to set up a training session, because she can be so stubborn.

"Grandma Linux" is an interesting problem, but the technical challenges are probably the smaller part.

non volatile thin client

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Thu Oct 04 20:50:39 -0700 2007

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Cheap Internet appliance with rented online storage included

non volatile thin client

rubycodez

Thu Oct 04 21:07:24 -0700 2007

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ah, interesting!

actually, they should just do like cell phone and give the machine away with 18 month of more subscription and have free upgrade since in bulk such a machine can be had for somewhat over $200.

here's another link on product if someone doesn't want to subscribe to Forbes (or despises Daniel Lyons for being a former SCO shill and then only apologizing for one tenth of his sins, heh, or maybe the Fake Steve Jobs thing)

I fail it!

zogger

Sat Oct 06 20:00:29 -0700 2007

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Nifty machine, and closer to what I was thinking, but their speed test says "sorry charlie, no can do". I got 3KB download speed in the test (three). I am greatfull for corporate america and the fcc and other government agencies for being so thoughtful to allow me to have even dialup, so I can get such blazing speeds for a total of close to 70 bucks a month. Us'ns peons are thankful for anything we can get. I know we don't add much to enhance shareholder value, and that we are lucky they are so generous with their expensive infrastructure they installed in 1893. Perhaps someday it will be paid off and they might upgrade it a little. Someday... I'm just hoping they don't up the rubber boot tax next year, hate to go back to barefoots in the cowlot again...but anything to help out them poor folks in the bigcity some more, they seem to be hurtin all the time, read it on the news and stuff, they so po' they needs cash injections from dem big banks.....

*Snort* gag... 3KBs... I just *love* web 2.0, just like being back in 95 again! Blazing downloads of those "rich" web pages!

Nice little machine though, spiffy! I like it! I have a miniitx board, just need an ide to CF adapter,..uhh, then the CF storage, a different power supply (I want DC all the time and make my own UPS with my truck battery sitting here and a regulated voltage supply), and I need a case that doesn't suck, something small and sharp looking, and a bigger stick of ram for it as well methinks. Probably run damn small or of I can mod austrumi to all english all the time better, and change some apps around a little. I think it is better than damn small or puppy. Gonna check at the farm and feed and look for a six pack of spare time, then get crackin on that project...

the piggy bank sprung a leak awhile back

rubycodez

Sun Oct 07 08:29:10 -0700 2007

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we paid those telcos billions in the 90s to have fiber running even to your property down there in the Georgian deep stix, but I guess they had some cost overruns in the executive compensation, stock option and golden parachute department.

the pigs with their banks

zogger

Tue Oct 09 12:43:58 -0700 2007

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Ya, I know. Can't be helped,. They spent a lot of those billions purchasing government it appears. Looks to be whenever some decent wireless gets here for me, so that's that. Had that one shot at it, but it fails the "decent" part, it's too buggy and prone to interference. Perhaps the tech will get better, I don't know. I do know they aren't going to be running better copper or fiber out here. They don't have to so they ain't gonna. Que Lily Tomlin.

With that said, I can still get dialup at medium crappy speeds,(not all the time but at least most of the time) and I won't be trading the other benefits of rural living just to get a better net infrastructure. "wouldn't be prudent" at this time. I got a hunch the big urban areas are gonna be hurting soon, and I want to be where the food and water live once that starts happening in a bigger way. I've seen first hand how fast reality changes once weird stuff happens in urban areas (riots, power outtages, fuel disruptions, local severe economic meltdown, etc) been there, done that, which leads me to the "thanks, but no thanks" position.

One of the main problems is...

Kai Howells

Fri Oct 05 03:07:13 -0700 2007

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The only main problem I see with an OS image in ROM, is updates - everyone on the web wants their new hotness - now it's AJAX, in the future it may be Apollo etc...
Some kind of netbooted machine can solve this, but there needs to be someone competent and trusted delivering the OS updates, and this still is beyond the average home user.
In my case, I'm converting my family to Macs - not because they are or aren't more inherently secure than Windows, but they definitely present a far smaller, and therefore far less lucrative target to botnet creators...

Step forwards, the Acorn computer.

GuyFawkes

Thu Oct 04 22:34:40 -0700 2007

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OS in ROM, it booted before the CRT warmed up, even a 17+ year old example will run any of the software required of an "appliance" with more than adequate speed, and remarkably good power consumption and thermal / noise rejection.

http://www.riscos.com/

Step forwards, the Acorn computer.

Kai Howells

Fri Oct 05 03:04:50 -0700 2007

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Mate, I used (and loved) the RiscOS Acorns in High School - back in the day friends had Amigas, and were going on about how fast things like their custom blitter chips were for moving RAM contents around - as a test, I made a RAM Disk (very easy to do - built into the OS) created a 1M file and duplicated it - timed the results a number of times and this thing, shifting data with it's CPU was faster than the famed blitter in the A500...

I loved the !Application package format (Hello NeXTSTEP and OS X) and how easy it was to add extensions to the OS. I loved the system-wide spell checking engine (finally here in OS X, 10+ years later). I loved that BASIC was built in to ROM, and saved it's files in a compact, memory-efficient tokenised format - they were so damn far ahead of their time it simply wasn't funny - given the choice between the Acorn and a Windows 3.1 PC, who in their right mind would go the PC?

And, another revolutionary aspect of them was their RISC CPUs with an insanely well crafted instruction set - that to this day lives on in Intel's XScale CPUs, and other ARM-based machines (iPhone etc)

Step forwards, the Acorn computer.

Petr Mareš

Fri Oct 05 05:53:25 -0700 2007

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To count file-copying as creating 1 memory copy is utter nonsense.

Step forwards, the Acorn computer.

Kai Howells

Fri Oct 05 15:31:04 -0700 2007

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File copying, from RAM to RAM with no disk involved is making a copy of a large block of memory, isn't it?

Step forwards, the Acorn computer.

Petr Mareš

Fri Oct 05 20:04:53 -0700 2007

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1. The file is internally read in 512 bytes blocks, first checking whether the block resides in buffers. There is a search and then a copy into new buffer.
2. If you had dynamic ramdisk called "RAM:", then you have to allocate new memory for every block written and internal structures of the device have to be updated. The static size "RAD:" does not need allocations, but there is also an overhead.
3. Then you need to write the buffer to the destination block (for every block read).

The blitter could not be used in the operation because the ramdisk could be in memory unaccessible to it (blitter works in "Chip RAM" only, ramdisk could be in "Fast RAM"). Anyway, the old MC68020 could copy pieces of memory with about 60-70% of the speed of the memory with something like:

                                                 mov.b #32, d0
                                                back:
                                                 mov.l (a1)+, (a2)+
                                                 mov.l (a1)+, (a2)+
                                                 mov.l (a1)+, (a2)+
                                                 mov.l (a1)+, (a2)+
                                                 dec.b d0
                                                 bne back
                                                

It moves 512 bytes. (there could be errors, I haven't done asm long time)

Step forwards, the Acorn computer.

Kai Howells

Fri Oct 05 20:29:57 -0700 2007

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O I C - I was mentioning the speed of using raw CPU cycles on the Acorn RISC OS machine, versus the published specs of blitter copies being able to move xxx bytes/sec...

Either way, they were both revolutionary machines, the Amiga seemed to have more of a lasting impact in the USA and Australia, the Acorn was quite popular in the UK and, strangely enough, New Zealand...

Cheers
k

The Storm Worm

Marcus

Mon Oct 08 11:39:10 -0700 2007

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The only reason we have problems like this is because all popular OSes (including windows, macosx, linux, *bsd) use ACL-based security, which in turn relies on the programs and/or users being more or less perfect. However, there is a solution. Capability-based security has been shown both in theory and in practice to be far more secure. With such a system it's easier to write secure code since the attack surface is much, much smaller and more clearly definable. Yet a virus/trojan/worm is usually quite powerless even if there are hundreds of program bugs and many user errors. I have never heard of any real reason why an OS shouldn't have capability-based security. It would even be easy to create compatibility layers so that old programs could run without changes. (However, if a compatibility layer is used then a bug in a program using it might cause the attacking code to gain all capabilities of that particular program instance. Still, decent capability-profiles for popular applications could be shipped with the OS, so it would still be much more secure than today anyway.)