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Subgraph OS is an adversary resistant computing platform.
Subgraph OS empowers people to communicate, share, and collaborate without fear of surveillance and interference. We designed it so that our users can safely perform their day-to-day tasks securely and privately.
In some ways, Subgraph OS is like other operating systems -- it is derived from Debian GNU/Linux. It provides the familiar GNOME desktop environment as its graphical user interface. Subgraph OS includes applications found in other Linux distributions. These similarities make Subgraph OS easy to adopt, especially for users with prior Linux experience.
Subgraph OS also has key differences from conventional Linux operating systems. In particular:
- Subgraph OS anonymizes Internet traffic by sending it through the Tor network
- Security hardening makes Subgraph OS more resistant to security vulnerabilities
- Subgraph runs many desktop applications in a security sandbox to limit their risk in case of compromise
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People attach different meanings to the words security and privacy. In computer
security, a secure system is one that assures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information it stores, processes, or communicates.
Confidentialityassures that information is not revealed to anybody who is not authorized
Integrityassures that information cannot be modified or tampered with by anybody who is not authorized
Availabilityassures that information can be reliably accessed by those who are authorized
Privacy is similar to confidentiality. Privacy also relies heavily on the integrity of communications. Our computers and other devices gather a great deal of information about our thoughts, our lives, and our social networks. They transmit this information over the Internet without our knowledge and consent. We have no way to trust the systems and networks that relay our communications over the Internet.
We designed Subgraph OS with these concerns in mind. We did this because we believe people should be able to communicate with each other privately. We also believe that people should not be required to reveal information about themselves or their social network without explicit consent.
We designed Subgraph from the ground up to defend against threats to security and privacy. We aim to provide our users with a computing platform that is adversary resistant.
We when use the term adversary, we are referring to an actual or hypothetical threat to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.
Hackers who exploit software vulnerabilities are a type of adversary. This is an actual and often active threat to security and privacy.
Adversaries present passive or indirect threats as well. An adversary may be passively gathering network traffic to conduct surveillance on users.
Lastly, adversaries may present theoretical or impractical threats. For example, a cryptography algorithm may have a theoretical weakness. At the time the weakness is discovered, the threat may not practical in the real world. As technology and attack methods improve, the weakness ceases to be theoretical and real world attacks emerge.
We use the term adversary to cover all of the above possibilities.
Secure systems should be resistant to all of these types of threats.
While no computing platform can anticipate and defend against all possible threats by all possible adversaries, we aspire to make such attacks extremely difficult for adversaries. By making these attacks difficult, they also become more expensive for adversaries. Adversaries must bear the cost at scale if a large number of users deploy strong security and privacy defenses. Through Subgraph OS, we aim to make these defenses freely available and easy to deploy.
Some of our users have critical security and privacy needs. Subgraph OS grants them strong security and privacy to conduct their activities safely. Casual users also gain the same security and privacy benefits without having to sacrifice usability and maintainability.
This is adversary resistant computing.
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