Hello,
First of all I have been following the crowdfunding and mailing list since the first of august (I have been using another email adress) and I have to say I really like every aspect of this project and I highly respect and admire the ideology that goes with the project.
I haven't been able to pledge until now but I will make sure to do so as soon as I can and before the crowdfunding ends. I really want to test what an EOMA68 laptop would look and behave like, and I want to replace my tiny Raspberry pi server with another EOMA68 (I will also be willing to buy more powerful computer cards if they ever get created).
Since the EOMA68 is entirely free, I was thinking that *theoretically* it should be possible to read and verify every firmware, and/or binaries present to run the chip (I don't really know how to call it so I will call it "microcode"). More and more people are worried about the microcodes that are run on our hardware and being able to verify what is actually running on our machine (when it boots for example) would be comforting. It seems to me that it's the first time the source code for every microcode in a computer will be available, since some projects tried to do so in the past, but never achieved to run 100% without proprietary code (purism, novena, ...).
From a security point of view, open source code is the best option since it
allows to check if the code being run isn't malware. However, if I don't verify the code present on my machine, how will I know it is the same code as the source that was analyzed and that it is not malicious code ? That's why I'm asking if it would be possible to read the microcodes present on the chip, and check them against the online source codes (kind of a checksum ?). That way we would be able to know if the code had been tampered with, be it during shipping, after being infected by a malware that was somehow able to change the boot code or some firmware, an evil maid attack, etc.
Just to be clear I'm not being paranoid to the point where I would suspect some bad guys inserting malware in my machine during shipping (I guess the country I live in is "libre" enough to not do that, but that's surely not the case for everyone everywhere in the world), and I will probably not try to verify every firmware on the chip, but since this is one of the first truly free system I was asking myself if it would be possible. Also maybe being able to do so easily would attract more people who are deeply focused on security and privacy and would be beneficial to the project.
I also understand that as of today, checking every code on a system is more an utopia then a doable thing (you'd also have to check firmware from your keyboard, mouse, webcam, USB flash drive, and pretty much everything you connect to the main board) and may be pointless, but I'm also confident that in the future (maybe distant, maybe not) we will have to be able to do so if we want to keep our digital life private, as everything we do is more and more linked to the digital world, and malware techniques are becoming more and more creative (see for example BadUSB).
I'm not a computer scientist and although I do my best to learn how software works, I don't understand everything about hardware and I may be missing some important point that makes my idea impossible to realize. That's why I'm asking it here since you know far more about it then me.
Also please forgive my written expression: I'm doing my best to express my ideas clearly, but English isn't my native language and I sometimes don't know how to express myself to be best understood.
Anyway, I sincerely hope this project becomes a great success, and that you will be able to make it grow even more.
Kind regards,
Raphaël Mélotte A Bioengineering student interested in computers