Earlier quoted context omitted.
The agent process is tricky to set up and persnickety, especially if you use the token for anything else besides SSH. At one point, before I tableflipped and switched back to software keys, I had to switch agent processes any time I used my Y4 to sign into a VPN. The theater is that you're protecting a key but not the account the key protects . Yes, you'll never lose the actual RSA key bits to an attacker. But that'l…
FWIW, I never had that issue with my NEO on OSX/macOS. I was using my NEO for git signing, SSH, as well as U2F.
Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
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Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#142Will be keeping an eye on it though.
Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>> The phone's kernel, in addition to being more important attack surface than the Linux kernel (because of the jailbreak market, among other things), is auto-updated. Most android phones are not updatable at all since manufacturers don't publish any update. That, alone, should be enough to put phones among the most vulnerable devices on the planet.
It puts those Android phones among the more vulnerable devices. Don't use those Android phones. I recommend iPhones to anyone concerned about security, but you can substitute the Google phone of your choice; I don't want the argument today.
Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#144It sounds very hipster and all, but how is a phone more trustworthy than a Linux PC? Cool, we don't need to trust a PC, now we have to trust a phone and pretend that malware for smartphones don't exist at all. Hardware USB token looks much better as its attack surface is so much smaller than iOS/Android.
* Every application on the phone is sandboxed. * The disk is encrypted by default, and the OS is aggressive about keeping it encrypted ; a booted-up computer is almost always decrypted. * The language runtimes on the phone are hardened. * The phone's kernel, in addition to being more important attack surface than the Linux kernel (because of the jailbreak market, among other things), is auto-updated. * The phone's us…
Security Problems: Android-specific
-- Android 5 was supposed to make encryption mandatory, but it killed performance, so they rolled that back. Android 6 was supposed to do it again, but if your phone isn't fast enough, or you are upgrading, again it isn't mandatory. My Android 6 phone didn't use encryption until I enabled a pin and biometrics.
-- Many of the old versions of Android that will never get patched are still in use, meaning many phones will never be secure. New malware attacks come out regularly because there's such a large market of old Android devices.
-- Only certain things are auto-updated, and holes which require a firmware patch seldom make it to the phone due to forking.
-- Vulnerabilities in chipsets happen every other year and make hundreds of millions of devices vulnerable at once, and require patches to travel the entire supply chain.
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Security Problems: Both iPhone and Android
-- Every year, more application-specific and privesc vulns are found in core phone software, compromising credentials and providing new opportunities to compound exploits. Browser exploits are notoriously effective.
-- Anyone who wants to use a useful feature of their phone on a carrier-branded device has to become superuser.
-- Ransomware isn't just for desktops anymore! Ransomware exists for both platforms that will lock your device and demand money to unlock it, or it will attempt to destroy data. How does it get in? The app store.
-- Don't want to ransom the user's data? Just silently steal their credentials, take over accounts, then sneak backdoors into the phone.
-- It's been shown that vendors and government organizations have their own service code that can run without user intervention. Also, Cheinah.
-- Call and SMS hijacking using SS7 are carrier-independent, and GSM providers that run vulnerable older encryption protocols allow calls and SMS to be intercepted. The NSA can process A5/1 encrypted GSM connections - thanks for the heads up, Snowden - and in general it's possible to force a weakened or unencrypted network connection. (If you have to use SMS two-factor, you should use a dedicated sim+number that no one knows about, so hopefully your phone is dual-sim to make that easy) And to add to the embarrassment, both iPhone and Android users have suffered DoS attacks just from being sent a single SMS.
-- If you do lose your phone, PINs, swipes, and biometric data can be recovered to unlock the phone. Studies have shown that credentials can be recovered from some phones even after a remote wipe procedure.
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What moving all your secure tokens to a phone costs you is a genuine sense of security. There's a wild wild west of an app market, phishing's easy, vulns are plentiful, there's tons of varying hardware and software platforms to find holes in, and everyone now thinks they're secure, but nobody actually secures them. If I'm a malware writer I'm definitely going to target phones.
I mean, consider that if they were really bulletproof secure, it wouldn't take years to certify an old, functionally handicapped version of a phone just for POTUS to use it. It's so difficult to make a secured smartphone that Trump was allowed to keep his Samsung Galaxy to tweet with on an unsecured wifi network.
Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#145Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#146Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, will fix this asap. We have tested on bash, zsh, and fish on macOS but it seems we missed an edge case. I'll follow up with your ticket.
came here to make note of this as well. thanks for the prompt fix, i'll check it out again in a couple of days :)
Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of us have a keyring too - and losing that is a major pain in the ass. FOr me - I'd say my wallet/keys/phone are the objects I own that are "most secure".
i'm keyless and loving it, true most aren't
Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've hit the nail on the head. If your computer's ssh binary can be compromised so can krd. If the main objective is to prevent other apps in user space from reading unlocked private keys, why not just ssh/sudo into a secondary account where the default shell is set to an ssh client?
The point is, even when krd is compromised, the malicious party cannot gain access to your private key. They key is only stored on your phone and you have to physically confirm the login from your phone.
Re: Show HN: Kryptonite – a new home for your SSH private key
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
came here to make note of this as well. thanks for the prompt fix, i'll check it out again in a couple of days :)
fish shell should be working now, let us know if you have any other issues!