Shithappens

The Raspberry Pi single board computer has been an astounding success since its launch nearly five years ago, to the extent that as of last autumn it had sold ten million units with no sign of sales abating. It has delivered an extremely affordable and pretty powerful computer into the hands of hobbyists, youngsters, hackers, engineers and thousands of other groups, and its open-source Raspbian operating system has brought a useful Linux environment to places we might once have thought impossible. The previous paragraph, we have to admit, is almost true. The Pi has sold a lot, it’s really useful and lots of people use it, but is Raspbian open-source? Not strictly. Because the Broadcom silicon that powers the Pi has a significant amount of proprietary tech that the chipmaker has been unwilling to let us peer too closely at, each and every Raspberry Pi operating system has shipped with a precompiled binary blob containing the proprietary Broadcom code, and of course that’s the bit that isn’t open source. It hasn’t been a problem for most Pi users as it’s understood to be part of the trade-off that enabled the board’s creators to bring it to us at an affordable price back in 2012, but for open-source purists it’s been something of a thorn in the side of the little board from Cambridge.

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Not only is Raspbian intentionally without any way to verify integrity of download (hashes not signed), employee of Raspberry PI own admission states basically states they fear using secure crypto out of fear of being "uncompliant" with some "crypto export laws".

I work for Raspberry Pi. As for using SHA-256 over SHA-1, that then pushes the hash into the realm of crypto software which is controlled by export regulations - given the minuscule chance of collisions with SHA-1, it would cause far more problems than it solves to use SHA-256.

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The privacy software Tor has aided everything from drug dealing marketplaces to whistleblowing websites in evading surveillance on the darknet. Now that same software can be applied to a far more personal form of security: keeping hackers out of your toaster. You can still get to your baby monitor via an app or the web, but a potential hacker won’t even be able to find it. On Wednesday, the privacy-focused non-profit Guardian Project, a partner of the Tor Project that maintains and develops the Tor anonymity network, announced a new technique it’s developed to apply Tor’s layers of encryption and network stealth to protecting so-called “Internet of things” or “smart home” devices. That growing class of gadgets, ranging from refrigerators to lightbulbs to security cameras, are connected to the Internet to make possible new forms of remote management and automation. They also, as the security research community has repeatedly demonstrated, enable a new breed of over-the-Internet attacks, such as the rash of hackers harassing infants via baby monitors or the potential for hackers to steal your Gmail password from your fridge.

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Shares in Premier Farnell, the company behind the Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized single-board computer, have surged by 50 per cent after the group revealed it has agreed a takeover deal with a subsidiary of Swiss manufacturer Datwyler. Bidco has offered 165p per share in cash, which values Premier Farnell at around £615m, and represents a premium of around 51 per cent to the company's closing price of 109.3p yesterday. The deal has an enterprise value of around £792m.

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These summaries of 81 Linux friendly, open-spec SBCs accompanies our 2016 Hacker SBC Survey. Cast your vote — and maybe win a free board. After checking out the these descriptions of 81 single board computers under $200, as well as our 2016 Hacker SBCs Comparison Table, vote for your favorites in our 2016 Hacker SBC Survey.

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