Niche – Chromebooks are relatively niche. A hacker would be better off having Windows or Apple since there are far more out there compared to Chromebooks. Difficult – Since Chrome OS is written in simplified LINUX with hardened kernels, it is hard to hack.
However, Google is the first to admit that its laptop isn’t 100 percent safe. In fact, there have been several instances wherein viruses and other types of malware were able to bypass the security layers of Google Chrome — and, by extension, the Chrome OS that powers Chromebooks.
Unfortunately, the Chromebooks are designed to be very simple machines that connect mainly to the internet. The good news is that this provides us with a really cool opportunity to hack them!
A common question we ran across in our research was “Do Chromebooks protect you from malware?”.
Chromebooks are Designed to Fight Malware. Google points out that the Chromebook is built with “multiple layers of protection”. This means that, even if a malicious program can bypass one security feature, several others are still in place to prevent it from fully infecting the computer. One of these layers is automatic updates.
Segura added that a Chromebook remains as vulnerable as any other computer to “man-in-the-middle” attacks, in which a hostile Wi. Fi network (or a wireless router that’s been remotely hacked) can start spying on your Web traffic or redirecting it to other malicious sites.
Why is Chrome OS so hard to hack?
Difficult – Since Chrome OS is written in simplified LINUX with hardened kernels, it is hard to hack. Detection – Chrome OS has two partitions. Each time the OS is started, they are compared.
What is the best operating system for a Chromebook?
Xfce4 will allow us to access the foundational operating system on your chromebook, which is called Linux and the version we will be using is called Ubuntu Linux! This is an operating system like Mac OSX or Microsoft Windows that will allow us to install and run programs. The Chrome OS is based on Linux too.
Bottom line: If you need a laptop primarily for Internet use and you want it to be as secure as possible, a Chromebook is indeed an excellent choice. However, if you need a powerful machine that can run (and do) pretty much anything you’d probably be better off sticking with either a Windows laptop or a Macbook.