Chrome OS Remains Undefeated At Pwnium 3 178
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by
timothy
from the technical-victory dept.
from the technical-victory dept.
hypnosec writes "Google has announced that its Chrome OS has managed to remain undefeated during the Pwnium 3 event that was held alongside Pwn2Own. Announced by Google on January 28, 2013 the Pwnium 3 event carried a prize money of $3.14 million. Researchers were asked to carry out attacks against a base Samsung Series 5 chromebook running the latest stable version of Chrome OS. It turns out security researchers were not able to come up with winning exploits even after the competition's deadline was extended. Google Chrome Team has revealed that partial exploit entries have been filled in but, no other details have been released."
It's an "OS" (Score:2, Informative)
Chrome OS is more barebones than my phone.
Re:Does it do anything at all? (Score:4, Informative)
To anyone who wants to play around with it: there are Chromium OS VM builds out there you can play with in VMWare or Virtualbox (legal, it's all opensource).
I tried it out a few weeks ago. It really *is* just a web browser. I have trouble understanding why someone would spent $1300 for a Pixel unless they planned to install a real OS on it. Yeah, I get that the display is nice, but for that kind of money I should be able to... I dunno... maybe run the aforementioned VMWare, like I do now on the $599 laptop I virtualized Chrome (and Win7 and PC-BSD) on. And played Portal on, etc.
Re:Does it do anything at all? (Score:4, Informative)
Posting this from my series 5. :)
It runs Ubuntu/Xubuntu 13.04 quite nicely booting off an SD card. You'd be hard pressed to get a better laptop for the money, and it's massively more useful than any table I've ever used.
Re:OS that doesn't do anything isn't cracked.. (Score:4, Informative)
Gods yes. My father's Chromebook has probably saved him its price already in visits to the computer shop to get viruses removed.
Re:OS that doesn't do anything isn't cracked.. (Score:5, Informative)
That is why I don't understand why its included....do they include other thin clients? Because that is ALL it is, its a minimal kernel designed to have just enough to launch the browser interface, no different than one of the old Sun Ray thin clients. The ONLY difference between Chrome OS and any other classic thin client is Google provides the infrastructure in return for being able to datamine you for their real customers, which is of course the advertisers.
Now does this mean ChomeOS is "bad"? Of course not, if a thin client is all your company needs I would be happy to set one up, for some jobs a thin client is really all that is needed....BUT, and its a BIG BUT, there are a HELL of a lot of tasks that thin clients just aren't built for which is why I just don't get marketing this to consumers. Hell even my most boring home customers have SOME software they want to run, take the little old lady that was my last customer of the day, I had to load the little software that comes with her wireless printer into her new system because she uses that to make little announcements for her family, calendars made out of pictures of the new grandbaby, anniversary party invites, that kind of stuff. If she couldn't have her little software? The PC might as well be a paperweight for all the good it would do her.
So I really don't get why these rags keep lumping in ChromeOS with Windows and OSX because its really nothing like them at all, those are your classic "fat client" full OS while Chrome is a classic thin client "browser in a box". Hell feature wise its got less going for it than Android, Android you can side load and run third party programs easily and from what I've seen Chrome is strictly web based which is why they can get by with such little space on the drive, everything is supposed to be hosted by Google and run in the browser.
It just makes no sense at all to run a test of fat clients with Chrome, to use a /. car analogy it would be like having a test on which truck gets the best mileage and entering a moped. Sure its gonna get the best mileage but so what? It doesn't actually DO the jobs that you need a truck for in the first place!
I just bought a chrome book last week. (Score:5, Informative)
But what about off line? Google docs off line lets you edit documents and presentations off line. They sync when you get the connection. When it first came it had no off line edits. Then they have introduced doc and presentations. Spreadsheets would be next I guess. Or may be not. Gmail offline can be customized to keep last so many days worth of email in the local cache. Google calender works off line, ( I think, need to go back and check.).
Off line music player works, off line video play back works. Source of the media could be the internal drive or any USB drive, including the USB powered hard disks. Kindle off line reader works, three books cached very quickly. Apps exist like "Read this link later" that works off line.
So off line, you can watch video, listen to music, read books, cached web pages. You will have read/access to all the google drive docs. And write access to docs and presentations. I think for 200$ it is way more than what I expected.
Re:OS that doesn't do anything isn't cracked.. (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe because some of us are still proponents of 'computers', not content-sipping machines. Awareness of computing means more than getting work done or being entertained, it also involves some learning about the nature of how we do these things can and should change over time.
So my mother who does nothing but play games and email should have a general purpose computer because you think a device should do more than just suck content?
we should all at least be aware of our ability to govern our processing needs, whether we enjoy the idea or not.
Yet you just said that everyone needs more than just content machines. My mom is aware of her needs, yet you want to force something more on her...
I am a developer. Unlike the masses, I need a general purpose computer. There will always be a market for them no matter how much we flood the market will less versatile devices like tablets and smartphones (which is where I believe the market is heading.)
For personal use, many people do not need a full computer, lets give them something simpler that better fits their needs. Even some business purposes can be done on a tablet now. Why should we force them to buy something more?
25 years ago would you have suggested that we all continue to use dumb terminals hooked up to mainframes? The modern computer decimated the market for mainframes, supercomputers, and minicomputers. Today, the market share of these large and powerful machines is significantly diminished, yet they still exist for the people have a need for them that a normal computer can not fulfill.
Plain and simple, not everyone needs a "computer" just because you think that they do. There will be a need for them and computers will not go extinct, but fewer and fewer people (as a percentage) will have that need and smaller devices will displace computers in the market.