The chromeos security model praised in this article seems quite too conservative for devs to me, considering the inconvenience trade-offs:
- persistent state is discouraged, but not disallowed. in fact, when the browser is exploited, any/all internal state necessarily must be be accessable and modifiable. i'm taking an educated guess that persistent browser internal state is less guarded against exploitation than external inputs.
- once pwned, most of your important data can probably be captured and accounts taken over before you ever decide to reboot. it's a PITA to have to reboot before accessing anything sensitive; no one should have to think/remember to do that. (maybe if chromeos were serious about preventing persistent threats, they'd force a reboot every night?)
- yes, it's defense-in-depth, but security is a game of trade-offs, where convenience often trumps technical security mechanisms in terms of increasing security overall.
I enable dev mode, but I appreciate the "stateless" sentiment in terms of encouraging data backup. i think I end up backing up my data (git push, etc.) more often than I would on a non-chromeos laptop, because it "feels" like more a necessity; especially after my 2 yr-old son hit the spacebar during that god-awful dev-mode bootup warning screen, and proceeded to factory-reset my chromebook.
- persistent state is discouraged, but not disallowed. in fact, when the browser is exploited, any/all internal state necessarily must be be accessable and modifiable. i'm taking an educated guess that persistent browser internal state is less guarded against exploitation than external inputs.
- once pwned, most of your important data can probably be captured and accounts taken over before you ever decide to reboot. it's a PITA to have to reboot before accessing anything sensitive; no one should have to think/remember to do that. (maybe if chromeos were serious about preventing persistent threats, they'd force a reboot every night?)
- yes, it's defense-in-depth, but security is a game of trade-offs, where convenience often trumps technical security mechanisms in terms of increasing security overall.
I enable dev mode, but I appreciate the "stateless" sentiment in terms of encouraging data backup. i think I end up backing up my data (git push, etc.) more often than I would on a non-chromeos laptop, because it "feels" like more a necessity; especially after my 2 yr-old son hit the spacebar during that god-awful dev-mode bootup warning screen, and proceeded to factory-reset my chromebook.