CPU level security threat. How can we protect ourselves?

Agreed.....that IS the important part

Just out of idle curiousity, what do you use to backup?

Right now my network storage is Western digital 1TB X4 for redundancy, they are sitting at 12% use. 1 external hard drive and I also make use of USB thumb drives 8Gb. I keep them small due to cost and because i put data to them and then soft lock it "make it read only" once done. They are for once off use so i don't reuse them once the data is on and the drive is soft locked it becomes a ROM in my eyes. i know i can add more but the cost is very low so this is not a problem.

My other backup for the LAN storage is blu-ray external writer and i use 25GB disks. In all honesty i have used maybe 2 Disks so far. I do not write on the disk more then once so basically i make a "new" backup on the disk each time.

Now to note this is not because i am paranoid but theft is a big big problem. So it is easy to store blue-ray disks so even if my office gets cleared out completely i can still recover everything. All my backups are Zipped and password protected.

I use 7Zip for this, i know some users had a bad time with 7Zip but it works for me personally. So even if someone grab everything all they get is flash drives they can't easily format and hard drives filled with Zip files that are password protected. My version of 7zip support the AES-256 encryption method.

It is also why i have a dedicated "older computer " to Zip and store my files. It can take a while. But cool thing with Zip files is you can actually chop them up into a size that makes it really handy for smaller size thumb drives especially.

**edit**

just to add i have 2 re-writable disks that i use for monthly backup but the other disks are long term backups i don't do many of them because i feel the re-writable disks are reliable BUT i make backups every few months using normal writable disks. But i only had the writer for a few weeks now so it hasn't seen much use yet. i replaced my DVD writer with it as it is a lot less that i have to store physically.
 
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I use 7Zip for this, i know some users had a bad time with 7Zip but it works for me personally. So even if someone grab everything all they get is flash drives they can't easily format and hard drives filled with Zip files that are password protected. My version of 7zip support the AES-256 encryption method.
You may want to have a look at borgbackup, I think it has features you will like and it will be easier to do backups with than with 7zip.
 
If raspberry pi is not open hardware then it may also contain the same flaws? Are there any open hardware cpus? Take a look here maybe you will find something with no closed source hardware dependencies.
 
There are some RISC CPUs that are open. Some say they may be the future and there are some inroads into server farms and consumer devices. Look up "OpenRISC" to get started.
 
There are some RISC CPUs that are open. Some say they may be the future and there are some inroads into server farms and consumer devices. Look up "OpenRISC" to get started.

@bytestream, @KGIII has a point. If you aren’t too fond of the Pi then maybe go with openRISC. Looks like a lot of applications don’t run on there judging by the photos, but I could be wrong.
 
Intel and AMD has a shared market when it comes to the X86 CPU type but yea with Apple and indeed the Pi driving arm and With big players like NVIDIA getting in on the action i suspect a massive movement to arm CPUs because of their over all cost and low power draw with really good performance and soon Linux will have a massive role to play.

See, this is why i slowly am driving myself towards development because a lot is going to happen in the next 3 years or so. And Linux WILL be a massive player in all of this.

Why Linux? Well Linux works and will work on anything, phones, computers, servers and even toasters if it must. But it will offer something that not even apple can offer "right now" but to be clear "will offer and soon". Cross platform apps.

This means you can do the same amount of work on a tablet, phone as on your computer. To be clear look at modern phones. Some phones have 18Gb or RAM with 8 core CPUs and clocking in insane speeds. With proper power management you can push them really hard and they can do so much more then just email and messaging.

With a docking station it can be a desktop or laptop but the point is, it can be both. The integration potential is insane and more to the point "useful" to any business that needs a lot of desktops. Or even a good work from home solution, thanks to 5G speeds and not to mention even the Web as an actual interface for work is now real. Google docks being an early but essential example.

What i am saying? Regardless that both AMD and Intel introduced really bad situations, Others are gearing up to close the gap between integration, cost effective solutions and universal functionality that we have not seen ever before.

i suspect that ARM will be the future and both Intel and AMD knows it, remember they are not new in this category BUT they didn't pushed it hard enough.

So in my opinion Linux will be a BIG player in this transformation it will overtake Windows if Windows doesn't start to support things like the Pi and other such tech in a big way. Example a working Win10 OS that is FREE will not exist Microsoft with their build in spy systems broke the trust of millions of users. So it is not hard to imagine a world without Microsoft, AMD and Intel. Because that can happen.

Will it happen? I don't know. But i am banking cross platform and constant access will allow people to sacrifice Microsoft, AMD and Intel. Why? Simple point what ever companies use becomes the norm and right now they are seriously looking into it because "cost"

Make no mistake, software that is currently windows only, WILL become Linux compatible if not Linux native and SOON. OR risk losing their customers. I am telling you now this WILL happen i am100% sure on this.
 
i suspect that ARM will be the future and both Intel and AMD knows it, remember they are not new in this category BUT they didn't pushed it hard enough.
We will still have to see about what kind effect this will have for GNU/Linux because Nvidia bought ARM and we know how Nvidia still hasn't opensourced any of their drivers so this doesn't look good for GNU/Linux and ARM with Nvidia being the captain of ARM.
 
Well another answer is a distro like Puppy installed frugally or EasyOS.

Run a Browser in a container epecially with EasyOS.
 
We will still have to see about what kind effect this will have for GNU/Linux because Nvidia bought ARM and we know how Nvidia still hasn't opensourced any of their drivers so this doesn't look good for GNU/Linux and ARM with Nvidia being the captain of ARM.

Yes but that said i didn't have a lot of trouble to get a official driver and that kinda makes up for it a little. But only a little. The point is we can get our stuff to work but yea a open source drive would be nice
 

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