71–80 of 190 posts
it's only as secure as the user
Also: if one desktop doesn't check SSL certificates and the other desktop does, then one desktop doesn't even enable the user to be secure. Checking SSL certificates is a pretty recent thing btw. E.g. various mail clients accept any self signed certificates silently.
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Sure, extremely motivated individuals or governments might do that. But I'd still rate a distribution by it's default security settings. Being secure by default is important if you are shipping to thousands of users.
Fedora comes with SELinux enabled by default, and is working towards more interesting sandboxing stuff for the future too.
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[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppArmor
[2] sudo apt install apparmor-profiles-extra
I believe in sandboxing, I hope it gets better and easier to use. I work on several C programs. I wish for the day when we have an easy to use, cross platform method of setting up a small set of open files at the start of a program, then be able to say "No more file access, no more network connections". I know this hides a whole bunch of complication, which is why it's hard and why there are so many ways to do it --…
"Better", but similar, would be to move to OS with the Object Capability model. Applications don't get access-by-default with security bolted on afterward, they get access to the objects they're initially granted and no way whatsoever to access anything beyond that. Sadly that's a huge change in programming and security model for most and wouldn't be an easy change to make.
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The thing with the Linux Desktop is that you can selectively enable SELinux, use PaX etc. and have security comparable to, if not better, than Windows 10, plus the fact that Linux is a much more varied attack surface still applies. Or you can do nothing, in which case you're probably less secure.
This is exactly the problem. You can buy Windows 10 machine and if it becomes vulnerable it's Microsoft's fault and you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. If default Linux desktop is insecure then consumer is supposed to figure out what exactly is insecure, be expert in knowing the alternatives and how to replace everything. The question isn't whether Li…
Linux Desktop is not secure by default for the same reason Secure Linux does not offer the best desktop experience: more secure means less convenient. Desktop Linux aims at being convenient.
Also keep in mind, we are comparing a single Microsoft OS to a variety of Linux distros each with its own default. it would make more sense to compare all of those individually to see how they fit to a couple standard threat models. Then put them through a week of everyday use by a not knowing better user and see how much damage the different OS sustain.
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The thing with the Linux Desktop is that you can selectively enable SELinux, use PaX etc. and have security comparable to, if not better, than Windows 10, plus the fact that Linux is a much more varied attack surface still applies. Or you can do nothing, in which case you're probably less secure.
Where's a good place to get a general guide on every day desktop use of SELinux, PaX, etc?
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This is exactly the problem. You can buy Windows 10 machine and if it becomes vulnerable it's Microsoft's fault and you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. If default Linux desktop is insecure then consumer is supposed to figure out what exactly is insecure, be expert in knowing the alternatives and how to replace everything. The question isn't whether Li…
> you would count on them to fix it immediately, push out the automatic update and go on with your life. Not only do you get security updates for your distro with the vast majority of Linux distros, but you also get it for all your 3rd party software, using the same system mechanism. They may not push the updates automatically, (you can of course set it that way), but some of us still want to be in control of what ge…
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Security should be multi layered. So if one thing fails there's still yet another layer of defence. This because everything will have bugs anyway, so it should be assumed none of the layers will ever be fully secure. systemd offers various methods to restrict daemons in their abilities. That's hardly used. Only recently tracker started sandboxing their indexers. Why block adding other security laters on Wayland? Ther…
The best defense in this regard is not do jack all unless the user asks for it.
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Maybe I'm not rational but I'm much more worried about Microsoft having access to my data than some random "Russian" hacker.
Yes, that does not exactly strike me as a rational stance to take. Are you actually more worried about Microsoft blackmailing you about those photos from 4 years ago?
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The best defense in this regard is not do jack all unless the user asks for it.
That's how Flatpak works with its portals, so assume you'll now read what I wrote instead of simple responses?
I mean, the answer is unequivocally, without the slightest doubt, yes. The Linux Desktop is probably a good 5-10yrs behind Windows 10 in terms of defense-in-depth mitigations as well as exploits in common targets like file parsers etc etc. https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Weston-W... is a good reference for all the stuff that Desktop Linux in 2017 is for the most part, missing
Security without a threat assessment is not very meaningful. If we are comparing a default linux desktop installation and a default windows installation, what would the test setup look like? Let say we had two such machines and gave them each a reachable ip address and let the first test just be them running unattended until unwanted software got in. In the second experiment we had the same machines go to random webs…
We should take the metric of "given a motivated party, how difficult would it be to exploit this machine" I have no doubt people are already sufficiently motivated to exploit Windows. But maybe only the NSA gives a shit about Linux- do we leave them unchecked?