

Ask HN: What's the more secure computing / mobile platform? - jaekwon

Assuming that I want to (try my best to) protect against nationstate attacks, and that my budget is an order of magnitude larger than the average consumer. Processing speed isn&#x27;t too important (e.g. 1ghz &amp; 1GB of ram is sufficient).<p>Also, what would be the best linux-like operating system?  I&#x27;m most familiar with Ubuntu, but anything will do.
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walterbell
Unclear that anything will protect against nationstate attacks.

Qubes is one of the less-insecure alternatives,
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/03/computer-
secu...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/03/computer-security)

Intro to Tails/Tor: [http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/tails-above-rest-
install...](http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/tails-above-rest-installation)

Android hardening (non-trivial effort):
[https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-
hardenin...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-
android-security-and-privacy)

------
jaekwon
One option that might be good is the Novena computer. Anybody have any
thoughts on that?

~~~
walterbell
Other than the FPGA, which the average person won't be programming, how is
this different from other ARM-based dev boards with unlocked boot loader? Some
software and hardware security info from a variety of perspectives:

Rants on community: [http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/biography-of-a-
cyp...](http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/biography-of-a-cypherpunk-
and-how-cryptography-affects-your-life/) &
[http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/tso-and-linus-
and-...](http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/tso-and-linus-and-the-
impotent-rage-against-systemd/)

Rant on Linux systemd:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/12/459](https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/12/459)

Desktop security alternatives:
[http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-is-
qubes-...](http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-is-qubes-os-
different-from.html)

Designing open crypto hardware:
[http://wiki.cryptech.is/](http://wiki.cryptech.is/)

~~~
jaekwon
Thanks, these are great resources. I'm certainly not the expert!

I suppose the novena is nice because it's fairly open source hardware, and
it's designed by Bunnie of the EFF.

~~~
walterbell
These are hard problems, it's good that some people are working on incremental
improvements, but there likely won't be silver bullets anytime soon.

George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones, uses an old computer running
DOS+WordStar to write his future novels. His writing computer is air-gapped,
i.e. never connected to the Internet,
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/14/george-r-r-martin-writes-
ev...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/14/george-r-r-martin-writes-everything-
in-wordstar-4-0-on-a-dos-machine/)

The CEO of AirBnB carries around the corporate strategic plan on typewritten
paper, [http://www.fastcompany.com/3027107/punk-meet-rock-airbnb-
bri...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3027107/punk-meet-rock-airbnb-brian-chesky-
chip-conley)

Along similar old-school lines, it's not a bad idea to improve our human
ability to memorize information, e.g. long passwords,
[http://artofmemory.com/](http://artofmemory.com/)

