Best Chromebook for Students

Update, June 2017: Our pick for best Chromebook for students remains the budget-friendly and portable Chromebook Flip, but Samsung’s Chromebook Pro is the pick for anyone who wants the very best.

• Best overall
• Best big screen
• Best high-end

Best overall

ASUS Chromebook Flip (C100)

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If you are a student in the market for a Chromebook or if you’re buying for someone who is, the ASUS Chromebook Flip is our top pick. While not the most powerful available, it still has plenty enough where it counts so it can do everything a student or graduate needs in the perfect form factor for someone on the go.

We’ve seen several new Chromebooks and expect more to arrive, but the value and small size mean the Chromebook Flip is still our top pick.

The bottom line: Small and portable, the Chromebook Flip is great for a busy student. The excellent app support means you’ll be able to use it to get things done and be able to play games or watch a video during the downtime.

Why the ASUS Chromebook Flip is the best

The 10.1-inch ASUS Chromebook Flip convertible — the screen folds back to provide a tablet experience — has a 1280×800 touch screen, great battery life, and can run apps from the Chrome Web Store and Google Play. Whether it’s Google Docs, Wikipedia or Facebook, the Chromebook Flip will serve you or the student in your life well. The best part is that you’ll find one under $300.

The MediaTek processor and 2GB or 4GB of onboard RAM (we recommend the 4GB version) do a fine job of surfing the web, watching full-screen videos, or playing some of your favorite Android games from Google Play. Of course, Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office apps for Chrome or Android also run very well so the schoolwork can get done, too. The small size and long battery life mean you’ll be able to take it with you from class to class or to a coffee shop for lunch or quiet time.

The budget-friendly and super-portable Chromebook Flip just ticks all the boxes for anyone in school.

Best big screen

Acer Chromebook R13

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The Chromebook R13 offers a lot for its higher-than-average price. It has a solid metal build and nice-looking screen, with a solid (but quite standard) keyboard and trackpad. It isn’t particularly light, but much of that is because of its large battery. The only real concern here is performance and configuration options, as you’re getting a MediaTek ARM processor and can only choose to get 16, 32 or 64GB of storage — there’s no choice to get a higher-end processor or more RAM.

The addition of Android apps and a full touchscreen just add to the list of reasons why this is the right Chromebook for any student who needs something bigger.

Bottom line: If you’re happy with the base configuration and don’t need something that’s hyper-portable, this is going to be a great choice for a student who wants something a little larger than the ASUS Chromebook Flip.

Best high end

Samsung Chromebook Pro

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Samsung and Google have built the best Chromebook you can buy with the Samsung Chromebook Pro. It’s incredibly well built, has one of the best displays of any laptop and has the horsepower to handle anything you throw at it. And handle it well. That makes it perfect for the student who needs the very best.

The bottom line: For anyone who wants to use a Chromebook on a regular basis, and values getting extra performance and hardware quality at an added price, Samsung has made the Chromebook for you.

One more thing: There’s also a Samsung Chromebook Plus, built with a slightly slower ARM processor and available for a bit less money.

Conclusion

A Chromebook is a great — and familiar — experience for anybody in school. The ASUS Chromebook Flip seems like it was specially built for a busy student, but there are also great options with a bigger screen or the ultimate high-end experience. We think these three are your top picks for 2017.

Best overall

ASUS Chromebook Flip (C100)

See at Amazon

If you are a student in the market for a Chromebook or if you’re buying for someone who is, the ASUS Chromebook Flip is our top pick. While not the most powerful available, it still has plenty enough where it counts so it can do everything a student or graduate needs in the perfect form factor for someone on the go.

The bottom line: Small and portable, the Chromebook Flip is great for a busy student. The excellent app support means you’ll be able to use it to get things done and be able to play games or watch a video during the downtime.

Chromebooks

• The best Chromebooks
• Should you buy a Chromebook?
• Google Play is coming to Chromebooks
• Acer Chromebook 14 review
• Join our Chromebook forums

Samsung has released a ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ themed Galaxy S8 in China

If you want one of your own, you’ll need to set sail for the South China Sea.

Ahoy Matey! Samsung has partnered with Disney for an interesting cross-promotion for the latest film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, offering a Pirates-themed version of the Galaxy S8. As reported by Business Insider, the special-edition phone will be exclusively offered in China and will retail for around $900.

Each phone comes packaged in treasure chest packaging styled after the new film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The loot contained inside includes a Galaxy S8, a special-edition case as well as a collectible ring.

The phone itself is just a standard Galaxy S8 phone, with all the special edition content accessed via the smart clip-on case. Putting the case on the phone changes the phone’s UI to a Pirates-themed layout complete with a new background featuring Jack Sparrow and custom app icons.

If you’re kind of scratching your head at this cross-promotional offer, consider that China is a huge emerging market for big American blockbusters, which have historically done very well in China. Surprisingly, Dead Men Tell No Tales is the only Pirates film currently on the list of China’s top 50 highest-grossing films. With the film currently in theaters, expect it to keep creeping up the list — especially with Disney focusing it’s marketing powers and partnering with brands like Samsung.

Meanwhile, for those of us on this side of the ocean who might be interested in this special-edition phone, the package is only being offered through JD.com, so you’ll either need to travel over to China to get one or learn how to custom theme your phone without the special edition case.

Best hard drive for upgrading your PlayStation 4 storage

Get all the space you need with an external hard drive.

While your PlayStation 4 might initially seem like it has all the space in the world for games, apps, and movies, eventually you’re going to run out of room. Instead of deleting old saves or removing games from your system entirely, you can upgrade your space with an external hard drive. We’ve got the details on how to pick the right one here!

• Why you’ll want to upgrade
• Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB
• Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable
• WD 4TB My Book Desktop

Why you’ll want to upgrade

Depending on the size of your PlayStation 4 hard drive, it may be months or even a year or two before you start to really run out of room. In the past when this happened, you’d have to delete games and try to wiggle enough room to install the new shooter you just picked up.

However that all changed back in March when PlayStation added external hard drive support to its consoles. This means that all you need to do to upgrade your storage space is go ahead and plug in your preferred external hard drive and format it to your PlayStation 4. After that, you’ll be good to go!

There are a few things to remember when trying to pick out an external hard drive. First, be sure that it is USB 3.0, because your console is compatible with USB 3.0. You’ll also want to consider what storage size you want to pick up for your external drive; while a 1TB drive might be sufficient for some folks, others may want to err on the side of caution for more storage space. Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that while you might be tempted to pick up an SSD external drive, it isn’t going to make much of a difference when you are playing.

Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB

The Toshiba Canvio Basics is your run-of-the-mill 1TB hard drive. It comes in three different colors, has USB 3.0, and has no required software to update or install.

With 1TB of storage space, you’ve got enough room for about 25 games, not including updates and save files. That means that 1TB might not be quite enough space for every gamer, and that’s fine. For the ones who only need some extra space, this is a great external hard drive to check out.

See at Amazon

Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable

If you want a slightly beefier external hard drive, then a 2TB might be more up your alley. Seagate delivers a great portable hard drive with enough room for 50 full games.

It’s fully compatible with PlayStation 4 after the firmware update to 4.5 and comes in 4 different colors. It’s also available for just $10 more than many 1TB models. That means that getting twice the space is more affordable than ever, which leads to having plenty of space for all the games you haven’t discovered yet.

See at Amazon

WD 4TB My Book Desktop

If you don’t really care about portability, and you’re really just concerned with making sure you have as much room as is physically possible, then it’s time to consider a desktop external drive. They may be a bit bulkier, but once you’ve got it set up, you’ll never need to move it again, which can be handy.

This 4TB external hard drive from Western Digital has enough space to keep you downloading all of your favorite games, movies, and apps without any thought as to how much space they take up. It’s even available in larger sizes if you really want every bit of space you can possibly get.

See at Amazon

Have you considered upgrading your storage?

Have you picked up an external hard drive for your PS4? Which one? Let us know about it in the comments below!

Robotic shorts can shave minutes off a marathon time

In marathons, milliseconds matter. A split-second can be the difference between victory and defeat; between setting a record and coming in second. So, it’s a big deal when a team of Harvard engineers reveal a pair of shorts that reduce an average marathon time from 9:14 minutes/mile to 8:49 minutes/mile.

The shorts are part of a larger exosuit system researchers have in mind. But, for now, the shorts are tethered to an actuation unit that supports the muscles along the hip and leg. The suit adds strength and tension to these muscles as they’re activated, reducing the overall metabolic cost of a run by 5.4 percent.

Researchers at Harvard referenced a previous exosuit study out of Stanford to calibrate their running shorts — instead of applying force as the hip fully extends during a run, they shifted that force to slightly later in the stride. This technique doubled the shorts’ effectiveness.

“Our finding supports a paradigm shift toward the concept that mimicking our current understanding of biology is not necessarily always optimal,” the paper reads.

Engineers plan to continue testing various actuation profiles as their research continues. This particular study was funded by the DARPA Warrior Web program, the National Science Foundation, Samsung, The Wyss Institute and the Harvard engineering school.

“Our goal is to develop a portable system with a high power-to-weight ratio so that the benefit of using the suit greatly offsets the cost of wearing it,” researchers said. “We believe this technology could augment the performance of recreational athletes and/or help with recovery after injury.”

Source: Harvard, Science Robotics

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last work heads to Amazon’s silver screen

Amazon’s turning to literature once again for an original series. Only this time, Jeff Bezos’ video wing is eschewing Philip K. Dick in favor of The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Period piece The Last Tycoon tells the story of young Hollywood studio executive Monroe Stahr in the 1930s as he battles his boss (played by Kelsey Grammer) “for the soul of their studio” amid The Great Depression and the rise of Hitler’s Germany. The story is loosely based on the short, but highly influential career of MGM producer Irving Thalberg — the man responsible for sneak previews, reshoots and story conferences with scriptwriters. If the trailer below proves interesting enough, you can check out the pilot episode right now ahead of the full season’s July 28th premiere. Still not enough Fitzgerald? Then maybe check out Z, the story of F. Scott’s wife, Zelda, on the service.

Source: Amazon Studios (YouTube) (1), (2)

Xprize enlists sci-fi authors and filmmakers to map our future

Science fiction has been instrumental in creating the future from the very beginning. Real-life manipulator hands, originally created for the nuclear industry, were named after Robert Heinlein’s short story, “Waldo.” It makes a lot of sense, then, that when the Xprize program partnered with All Nippon Airlines (ANA) to “imagine a bold vision of the future,” it would look to celebrated science fiction novelists, writers, filmmakers, producers and screenwriters. The collaboration has produced the Science Fiction Council, a group comprised of high-octane sci-fi storytellers from nine countries, including luminaries like Margaret Atwood, Cory Doctorow, Andy Weir, Charles Stross, Ernest Cline and Nancy Kress.

The Xprize organization runs prize competitions to encourage and support solutions to humanity’s biggest challenges, like clean water, moon flights, Star Trek-inspired tricorders and even artificial intelligence. The latest prize seeks to do something similar, only directly aimed at humanity’s vision of its own future.

“Xprize has always been inspired by science fiction. Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold the Moon was an early inspiration for me, as was Star Trek, which inspired the recently-awarded Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of Xprize, in a statement.

This future-think initiative includes roadmaps across various domains like Planet and Environment, Energy and Resources, Shelter and Infrastructure, Health and Wellbeing, Civil Society, Learning and Human Potential and Space and New Frontiers. The roadmaps will help “identify the ideal catalysts, drivers and mechanisms — including potential Xprize competitions — to overcome grand challenges and achieve a preferred future state,” according to the press release.

Xprize and ANA have also created a new science fiction anthology site, Seat 14C, which will showcase original stories by members of the advisory council. The original tales will involve fictional passengers on a transpacific ANA flight (because sponsorship) who find themselves mysteriously transported 20 years into the future.

Source: Xprize

What to expect from Apple at WWDC 2017

As a rule, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is predictable: New versions of iOS, macOS and watchOS are the stars of the show, and anything else is gravy. WWDC 2017, however, is shaping up to be different. Although there hasn’t been much talk about what the new software will entail, the rumor mill has kicked into high gear with word of new Macs, new iPads and even a smart speaker. All told, operating systems may actually be the least exciting part of Apple’s keynote. But which products are likely to steal the spotlight, and which ones are just wishful thinking? That’s what we’re here to sort out.

A Siri speaker in your living room

Here’s something you haven’t seen in a while: the prospect of Apple introducing a completely new device at its developer conference. Rumors are swirling of that the company will unveil a Siri-controlled speaker at WWDC, overshadowing virtually anything else Apple would otherwise discuss at the keynote. It might not ship until sometime later in the year (likely to give developers time to support it), but production may have already started.

As you might expect, the speaker would represent Apple’s answer to the Amazon Echo and Google Home. It would likely handle many of the tasks that Siri already does on your iPhone, such as checking the weather, playing music and controlling HomeKit gear — you just wouldn’t have to pick up a gadget to listen to songs or turn on your lights. The speaker could be particularly important if you want to control your household when you’re away because you currently need to use an Apple TV or iPad as a hub to control your HomeKit-compatible devices remotely.

There hasn’t been much discussion of the speaker’s design, but Bloomberg believes it would stand out from the pack by focusing on audio quality. You’d enjoy louder, crisper sound than what you typically get from rivals like Echo or Home. It might also incorporate virtual surround sound that would provide a more immersive experience. There has even been talk of Apple including ambient noise sensors to adjust the volume when you’re talking, but it’s not clear that this feature made the cut before production began.

New MacBooks

A speaker might not be the only hardware introduced on stage. Apple is rumored to be updating its laptop line at WWDC, possibly in an attempt to underscore its renewed support for the Mac. The most credible rumors, again from Bloomberg, suggest that these would mostly be under-the-hood updates. Both the MacBook Pro and 12-inch MacBook would jump to seventh-generation Intel Core (aka Kaby Lake) processors that promise both faster performance and longer battery life. They might support more memory, too. Customers have complained that the MacBook Pro’s maximum 16GB of RAM isn’t enough to handle heavy workloads, and there have been hints that the laptop will support as much as 32GB with its next refresh. The more diminutive MacBook might also support as much as 16GB, although that’s clearly not as vital an upgrade given that it’s only designed for basic tasks.

There’s some tangible evidence to back up these claims. Apple recently delayed shipping times for 15-inch MacBook Pro orders, pushing their delivery to the day after the WWDC keynote. The Cupertino firm frequently stalls orders like this when it’s clearing out inventory for an outgoing device, so that’s as strong a sign as any that something is afoot.

Don’t get your hopes up for a MacBook Air update, though. Although the same Bloomberg rumor had Apple considering an Air refresh, neither the filings nor other clues point to an imminent upgrade. If there is one, we’d expect it to fly under the radar. This would be a maintenance update that does just enough to keep Apple’s most affordable system relevant in 2017 — hardly something you’d want to crow about in a keynote. You might see a switch to seventh-gen Core processors but not much more than that.

A 10.5-inch iPad

While Apple’s mainstream iPad just received an update in March, the iPad Pro is more than a little overdue. Neither Pro model has been touched for more than a year, and they’re based on a design that hasn’t changed much since the original iPad Air in 2013. Where’s a truly new iPad, one that pushes the concept forward? Thankfully, it sounds like you might get it at WWDC — there’s mounting buzz that an update is right around the corner.

If you believe Bloomberg, it’s the long-rumored 10.5-inch iPad Pro that many expect to replace the 9.7-inch edition. This would be more than just an upsized version of the slate you see today. Slimmer bezels would give it a footprint roughly comparable to its smaller sibling, so you wouldn’t have to give up portability for the sake of a larger screen. The 10.5-inch tablet is likely to pack a faster processor (a souped-up version of the iPhone 7’s chip, possibly called the “A10X”), and it might have a higher-resolution display to match. One IHS Markit analyst believes it could have a 2,224 x 1,668 LCD that slots in neatly between existing 9.7-inch iPads (2,048 x 1,536) and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2,732 x 2,048).

There isn’t much else to know about the specs at this point, but we have found a few clues. Case leaks from Twitter’s @ShaiMizrachi point to a familiar layout for the 10.5-inch iPad, including the stereo speakers you’ve seen on all Pro models so far. Also, Consomac has found Eurasian Economic Commission filings for four previously unknown iPad models split into two families. It’s easy to guess that these may be WiFi and cellular versions of both the 10.5-inch Pro and another iPad, possibly a refreshed 12.9-inch model.

Just don’t expect the iPad mini to get any attention at the same time. Apple only recently doubled the storage for the iPad mini 4, so it’s doubtful that you’ll see a more substantial upgrade a few months later. In fact, a BGR rumor claims that Apple might drop the mini in the long run. This tiniest of iPads reportedly doesn’t sell well compared to its larger counterparts, and the iPhone 7 Plus is close enough for some buyers. Bigger iPads are the future, and WWDC could reflect that.

Software: iOS, macOS and Siri’s future

Apple’s software plans would normally take center stage in one of our WWDC previews. This is a developer conference, after all. But thus far, there have been precious few credible hints as to what Apple will announce. This isn’t to say that this year’s updates will be low-key — it’s just that Apple may be keeping a lid on secrets this year.

In a Bloomberg interview, Apple’s Jimmy Iovine mentioned that iOS 11 would include a new Music app that does a better job with videos. Projects like Carpool Karaoke might fit better into the app, something that’ll help Apple push more exclusive video content going forward. Also, there are longstanding rumors of improved iPad support across all of iOS. You could use the Pencil to annotate all kinds of content, such as websites or email messages. This certainly makes sense if there’s a 10.5-inch iPad in the works, since Apple has been keen to demonstrate that iPads can serve as PC replacements.

When it comes to the Mac, there’s even less to say — we’re practically limited to speculation. One theory is plausible, though: Given that Apple File System launched on mobile devices with iOS 10.3, it stands to reason that macOS is next in line. If so, you could expect speedier, more secure storage that’s better-optimized for Macs with solid-state drives.

We haven’t heard anything about new versions of watchOS or tvOS, so any big features will come as surprises.

Instead, the greater focus might be on a common thread for all of Apple’s software: AI. It’s no secret that Apple has been making heavy investments in AI, and WWDC could be an ideal venue to showcase improvements, whether they apply to Siri or individual apps. Some of Apple’s acquisitions may indicate what’s on deck. Turi, for example, helps detect patterns and personalize content. Siri might be better at understanding your requests by recognizing what you tend to look for while iOS might be more proactive when suggesting photos or music.

Improvements to Siri could be particularly crucial this year. If there really is a Siri speaker, its success could hinge on high-quality AI; it has to answer common requests as well as an Echo or Home. And few would doubt that rivals like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana have distinct advantages over Siri on any device, such as Google’s access to its powerful search engine. Although we wouldn’t expect a total revolution in Siri’s abilities, it probably can’t remain as-is for much longer.

Wildcards: Mac Pros and iMacs

You can never completely rule out surprises at Apple events, even if WWDC’s focus limits the kind of introductions you’re likely to see. And there are certainly a few candidates this year.

One such possibility is a very early preview of the redesigned Mac Pro. Apple revealed the current workstation’s design at WWDC 2013, months ahead of its release, and it wouldn’t be shocking if there were a repeat showing as the company reassures developers worried about the fate of pro Mac desktops. But the new Mac Pro is still a long ways away (it’s not expected until sometime in 2018), and there may not be much point to showing it off if Apple isn’t ready to provide the finished specs.

Augmented reality might also show up, since Apple has been very open about its interest in AR technology. With that said, there aren’t any believable rumors of Apple having something it can show at WWDC. We’ve heard that it could be testing AR glasses, but they might not ship until 2018, if not later. At best, you’ll get a sneak peek.

If there’s a relatively realistic wild card, it might be the pro iMacs that Apple confirmed back in April. The company was only willing to commit to a “later in 2017” release at the time, but some of the hardware needed to make this all-in-one is available now. Notice how Intel’s new Core i9 chips have the abundance of cores that pros crave? No, they’re not Xeons, but they could easily fit the bill if you need to compile code or edit 4K videos. It may just be a matter of whether or not Apple is willing and able to use these parts quickly. We wouldn’t be surprised if these high-performance iMacs weren’t unveiled until the fall.

Image credits: Reuters/Stephen Lam; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Study suggests Airbnb hosts are unfair to people with disabilities

A recent study conducted by researchers at Rutgers University found evidence that Airbnb hosts might be less likely to rent to people with disabilities. But there are some important limitations to consider in regards to the findings.

The researchers created fake profiles with pictures of white men around 30 years of age and messaged nearly 4,000 Airbnb listings across the country. When inquiring about the host’s listing, some of the “renters” would ask if the unit was accessible to one of four disabilities: blindness, dwarfism, cerebral palsy or a spinal cord injury.

Profiles that didn’t ask about disability accommodation received preapproval almost 75 percent of the time, while those with a disability were preapproved at significantly lower rates ranging from 61 percent for dwarfism down to just 25 percent for those with a spinal cord injury. However, if a host followed the request up with questions before making the approval, it wasn’t classified as preapproved, which the researchers noted could explain some of the gaps in pre-approval rates.

Additionally, for every disability except dwarfism, profiles were more likely to be rejected compared to profiles with no disability. The study also found that units listed as wheelchair accessible were still less likely to preapprove individuals with blindness and spinal cord injury and more likely to reject those with blindness.

There are some limitations to the study, however. First, they did not take instant booking into account, which Airbnb says accounts for 60 percent of their reservations. And the study only used white male profiles, meaning compounding factors of race and gender weren’t measured. Finally, the study has not yet been submitted to a journal and subjected to peer review. Mason Ameri, one of the researchers on the project, told Engadget via email that the study is a working paper and they plan to submit to a journal in the near future. Douglas Kruse, another author of the paper, added that several colleagues at Harvard and Rutgers have reviewed the current version.

The researchers provide several suggestions for Airbnb to consider including enforcing Americans with Disabilities Act standards with hosts listing wheelchair-accessible units, cultivating partnerships with disability-focused organizations, and making sure hosts adhere to the company’s new nondiscrimination policy.

In a statement, Airbnb said they’ve already been working on a number of the issues brought up in the study and added, “Our work is ongoing and we will continue to work with everyone who shares our goal of making the Airbnb community more open and accessible.

Via: New York Times

Source: Rutgers

If hacking back becomes law, what could possibly go wrong?

Representative Tom Graves (R-GA) thinks that when anyone gets hacked — individuals or companies — they should be able to “fight back” and go “hunt for hackers outside of their own networks.” The Active Cyber Defense Certainty (“ACDC”) Act is getting closer to being put before lawmakers, and the Congressman trying to make “hacking back” easy-breezy-legal believes it would’ve stopped the WannaCry ransomware.

Despite its endlessly lulzy acronym, Graves says he “looks forward to formally introducing ACDC” to the U.S. House of Representatives in the next few weeks.

Hacking back sounds really awesome at first glance, and obviously, especially to lawmakers. The hacking back of “ACDC” in action would most likely happen just like on Mr. Robot, or in that movie about black hats. Evil hackers invade a company’s computer system and plant a cyber-bomb. Except the company’s IT department is actually a crack team of formerly-evil hackers who now work for the good guys (you can tell they’re the good guys because they have jobs). Because it’s now legal, the good guys dive into The Matrix and defuse the cyber-bomb just in time! Then they fly through the wires to get into the bad guy’s computer, instantly downloading his name and address and Tinder profile, sending it instantly to the FBI who bust through the guy’s door right as he’s trying to wipe the files!

Yeah, that’s probably how lawmakers see it happening, too.

Attacks that go both ways

The bipartisan ACDC bill would let companies who believe they are under ongoing attack break into the computer of whomever they think is attacking them, for the purposes of stopping the attack or gathering info for law enforcement. According to early press, the bill “includes caveats such as you cannot destroy data on another person’s computer, cause physical injury to someone or create a threat to public safety.

This is Rep Graves’s second attempt at making ACDC work out with all his friends. His May 25th revision of the legislation included attempts at limiting collateral damage, which as you may have suspected, is a particular criticism of people who work in infosec.

According to Politico, who had the early scoop on the new version:

Key changes include: a mandatory reporting requirement for entities that use active-defense technique to help federal law enforcement ensure such tools are used responsibly; a two-year sunset clause that would make Congress revisit the law in order to make changes; and an exemption allowing people or companies to recover their lost data if it’s found using defensive techniques and can be grabbed back without destroying other data.

Setting aside the naive idea that digital secrets can somehow be “stolen back,” just that information alone diagrams why hacking back generally isn’t considered a great idea by most.

Brian Bartholomew, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told Engadget, “While the proposal’s intent is to make it more difficult for an attack to be successful, it also raises major concern within the community.” He explained that for starters, it’s impossible to contain what data the victim touches when they’re hacking back, destroying the bill’s rule that victims only mess with their own stolen property.

“Another concern is for chain of custody preservation,” Bartholomew told Engadget, even if victims tell law enforcement what they’re about to do. “Providing a ‘plan of action’ is a far cry from possessing the proper training or legal expertise on how to preserve evidence that will be upheld in a court of law,” he explained. “It is only a matter of time until the first criminal is prosecuted and evidence [is] thrown out due to improper chain of custody or documentation.”

Attribution is hard and usually wrong when not done by teams of professional analysts. And even then they get it wrong thanks to the incredible skills attackers have at what’s called “false flagging” — making attacks look like they’re from someone else.

Bartholomew, who co-authored the leading research on “false flag operations” agreed. As it has been demonstrated many times before, attackers are becoming more and more aware of techniques to throw defenders off their scent and lead them down a wrong path.

“Pointing the proverbial finger at another attacker is becoming more commonplace and with the introduction of this bill, the possible outcome of such an act can potentially be devastating. Performing proper attribution of an attack is an already difficult and sometimes impossible task, especially for an untrained person.”

There is also the serious concern that a hack back attack might spark a bigger issue between nations than anyone’s considering.

Last September, the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at Cal Poly released a report called “Ethics of Hacking Back,” a neutral look at the issues and laws surrounding the infosec version of “an eye for an eye.”

The report comes from the stance that reasonable arguments exist to support hacking back. Still, in a summary from Patrick Lin, Ph.D., the group’s Director, Cal Poly found that the concept of hacking back fails across a number of categories. “If meant as a deterrent,” Lin wrote, “hacking back would likely not deter malicious and ideological attackers.”

Importantly, the paper cuts to the heart of all hacking back discussions by raising a critical issue: We don’t know if it would actually work or not because there is no data. “Currently,” Lin said, “there is no self-reporting of hacking back, because the practice is presumed to be ‘likely illegal’ according to the U.S. Department of Justice.”

We cannot track what we do not measure. Without that data—a way for individuals and organizations to safely report countermeasures, without fear of being made into criminals—it is difficult to answer the question of whether hacking back has deterrent value, which is an empirical question.

More to the ideological point of Graves’s bill, Lin points out that hacking back also won’t do anything to restore security.

By peddling the idea that hacking back could’ve stopped WannaCry — ransomware — ACDC is security snake oil. It’s reminiscent of the “anonymity box” gold rush that hit Kickstarter after the Snowden snatch and dump, where charlatans sold “Tor in a box” promising that their gadgets would’ve prevented the Sony hack. Just take a recent, dimly-understood hacking disaster and graft on an infantile solution, don’t bother to consult people in the trenches, and off we go.

When you try to make laws about hacking based on a child’s concept of “getting someone back,” you’re getting very far and away from making yourself secure. It’s like trying to make gang warfare productive. Or trying to make it legal to break into someone’s house to steal your stuff back and take photos, because they broke into yours, except without anything in your favor of going right. Unless you’re really, really good at different kinds of hacking. Spoiler: most everyone in hacking and security isn’t, no matter how hard they try to make us all think all hackers are good at everything.

It’s a smarmy and conceited bill to propose. But that seems to be going around Washington DC lately, so good luck to us.

Images: Yuri_Arcurs via Getty Images (Guys at computer); EFE/EPA/RITCHIE B. TONGO (WannaCry ransomware)

‘Instant Tethering’ comes to Chromebooks with some caveats

When you’re nowhere near a Wi-Fi hotspot, tethering to your smartphone’s data connection is a great solution. Doing it quickly and easily makes it even nicer. Apple has had what it calls Instant Hotspot since 2014, while Google added Instant Tethering to its Nexus and Pixel devices this past January. Now it looks like the quick connection technology is coming to Chromebooks as well, though there are a few caveats.

According to ChromeStory, the latest developer-focused Chrome OS version, Canary, has a flag you can use to toggle the feature:

“Instant Tethering Chrome OS
Enables Instant Tethering. Instant Tethering allows your nearby Google phone to share its Internet connection with this device. #enable-tether”

If you’re running this early-adopter build of Chrome OS, you can enable this feature by typing chrome://flags into your URL bar, reports 9to5Google. You can enable the tether option there, restart the machine and then find Instant Tethering in the quick settings menu in the “network” section. The feature will also need to be toggled on your smartphone, which will also need to be a Pixel or Nexus device. With those caveats in place, however, you should be able to quickly tether up your Chromebook and easily get online without Wi-Fi.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: ChromeStory