Noted security guru Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technologist at BT, has scoffed at Google's claims about its new OS, just announced yesterday. According to the Google blog post, Chrome OS represents a complete redesign of the underlying security architecture of the OS "so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware, and security updates." A bold statement to say the least...and apparently one Schneier doesn't think too much of. "It's an idiotic claim," he says. Sponsor In a Yahoo News story, it's reported that Schneier isn't completely buying Google's promises. "It was mathematically proved decades ago that it is impossible -- not an engineering impossibility, not technologically impossible, but the 2+2=3 kind of impossible -- to create an operating system that is immune to viruses." That seems to us like he's picking on the semantics of Google's statement just a bit. Google says that users "won't have to deal with viruses," and Schneier is noting that it's simply not... - Bwana ☠

It's simple actually. Software without bugs simply does not exist. If there is a bug or a clear vulnerability, someone WILL find it and someone WILL exploit it for profit. It's all about how many people are looking for it. As more and more people will move to Chrome(and Firefox for that matter), more and more vulnerabilities will appear. Doesn't matter if it's an OS or not. The only thing that will be harder is getting to your data(which will be in the cloud on a billion sites and webapps) - Bogdan Costea

Of course there will be security issues. Remember that Google Android bug where everything the user typed ended up being executed in a root terminal? - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

Google seems to be saying that the user will have less involvement in addressing these flaws, which doesn't contradict Schneier's statement about the impossibility of having a bug-free system - Mike Chelen

Gee, who to believe on this one: 2 security experts, or an analyst who probably has a liberal arts degree? Hmmm ... anyway Google's statement about users not having to worry about viruses is probably due to Chrome's auto-update feature. Of course, if nearly any other OS/app updated itself automatically without user approval, the blogosphere would be ablaze with fury ... - LANjackal

ubuntu and many linux distros have an option to download and install security updates automatically, it works quite nicely especially when all software is installed through the package manager - Mike Chelen