Rutkowska: State considered harmful - A proposal for a stateless laptop
Qubes OS creator Joanna Rutkowska has announced
a new
paper [PDF] describing a stateless laptop design that, she thinks, will
address a number of the security problems she sees as being inherent in the
Intel architecture. "The Trusted Stick, a small device of a 'USB
stick' or an SD card form factor, is an element that the user always
carries with themselves and which contains all the 'state' for the
platform. This includes the (encrypted) user files and platform
configuration. It also is expected to carry all the software and – what is
unique as of today – firmware for the platform, and also enforce
read-onlyness of these."