A PC that cannot become infected with malware"Gizmo your hard work has helped me tremendously. You inspired my friend and I to build a new kind of PC, in which we now have a U.S. provisional patent, that…I am going to make an incredibly bold statement right now…is impervious to all viruses, trojans, spyware -all malware in fact.
We call it a PI Client. PI stands for Preserved Integrity. It’s the same PC every time you turn it on. It will never slow down, there’s no updating and requires no maintenance. The machine itself is named the IMGolden PC. IM stands for Internet Machine and Golden means a user has no worries.
About a year and a half ago or so, you introduced me to Live Linux CDs as a fool-proof way of avoiding having one’s PC compromised. Specifically, the Ubuntu distro. I love the fact that the hard drive isn’t used at all…everything just goes to memory. No worries whatsoever! This is the idea the PC is based upon…with a few differences."
By now you should get the idea: the IMGolden PC is a Linux Based PC with no hard drive. When you start it up it boots a version of Ubuntu Linux that’s stored in a non-volatile memory module. It’s kind of like running Ubuntu from a Live CD except that the Live CD is actually in permanent memory. As is the case with a Live CD, there are a whole bunch of programs pre-installed and ready to use, including Open Office and Firefox.
It’s a clever idea with some immediate advantages. Every time you boot the PC it comes up in exactly the same state as the last time you booted it. Indeed, in exactly the same state it left the factory. And of course the operating system running from memory is much faster than running from a CD.
As there is no hard disk, there is nowhere for malware to hide. Any infection resident in normal memory (RAM) is destroyed when you power the machine off.
I know what you are thinking. "If this thing returns to the same state each time I boot it, then how can I save any of my work?"
You can’t. Well, not on the IMGolden PC anyway. You can, however, save your data to a USB flash drive or write it to a CD or DVD.
But that’s not the best way of saving your data.
Far better is to save it to a website. In fact, that’s the ideal way to use the machine. Instead of using the applications installed on the PC (such as Open Office), do all your work online using free web services like Google Apps and save all your documents and data to the web service.
It’s totally practical. You could use Gmail for your email, Google Apps for documents and spreadsheets, Flickr for your digital photos etc. Indeed, there are now free web services for digital editing, instant messaging and just about any other desktop application you can name. And you don’t even have to worry about backup!
I’ve felt for some time that web applications are the future of computing. Of course you don’t need a PC like the IMGolden in order to use web based applications; you can use any PC or device with a web browser. However, the IMGolden PC will, out of necessity, encourage you to move in that direction and that’s not a bad thing.
After using the IMGolden PC for a few days I was sorry to see it go. It, together with web based applications, introduced a kind of simplicity to computing that was a breath of fresh air. No worries about security, software updates, defragging, registry cleaning, backup and all the other usual PC hassles. It allowed me to simply use the computer to do what I wanted to do without any of the usual distractions.
On the downside the IMGolden PC is built into a standard PC case which strikes me as unnecessarily large. The Ubuntu Linux Desktop may also be confronting for some users even though it looks very similar to a Windows XP desktop. Still, all most users will need to do is double click the Firefox icon; from then on they are in familiar territory.
And is this the machine totally immune to infection? In theory no. The machine could become infected while you are actually using it, for example by visiting a hostile website that exploited a Firefox vulnerability. The machine would remain infected until the next reboot and in the interim that infection could result in confidential information being transmitted to a remote attacker. And of course if you leave a USB flash drive plugged in, that could be used to transmit an infection even after rebooting.
However, we are talking very low risk possibilities. I’m not aware of any Firefox vulnerability involving code injection that works in a Linux environment. Similarly, malware infections that propagate using a flash drive are rare in Windows setups let alone Linux.
No, I think it’s fair that in practice the probability of the IMGolden PC becoming infected is low enough that you could safely ignore it.
But I have one final reservation and an important one at that: The idea behind the IMGolden PC only works well if you are prepared to use web based applications. If you are not yet prepared to make that leap then using a diskless PC like this is likely to be a very frustrating experience.
There are various "thin client" PCs around that claim to provide similar functionality to the IMGolden PC. How they compare I cannot say. What I can say is the IMGolden PC did exactly what it was supposed to do without any problems and that is all you can ask for.
All reservations aside, this is a very clever idea that’s well implemented. It reinforces what I have long known: you subscribers are a clever lot.
See you next month.
