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Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#51

Post by mclehman »

aianus wrote: post #18

Shameless plug since it's relevant: We built a Slack bot [0] that shames (in good humor) people in the office who leave unlocked laptops unattended. We had a similar system at Twitter where we would tweet a certain codeword on unlocked laptops and it was very effective in stopping that behavior. [0] https://sniped.app/

Around the lab I work at we do a similar thing, always some variation on dolphins. Dolphin background, messaging a dolphin on slack, etc.

It's recently escalated to sudolphin-ing (think a sudo alias involving cowsay and you're on the right track).

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#52

Post by umairmehmood »

mijkal wrote: post #32
umairmehmood wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does FireVault work with Google cloud ?. I have a google cloud folder which is synced with my local drive. Now if I enable Firevault, it will encrypt all the data... but im not sure what will happen to the Google Drive folder on mac. How will google drive manage my encryption then.

FileVault is encryption at the disk level; you unlock at startup. Unless you have other encryption methods for files or directories, once you're logged in, they are unencrypted as far as Google Drive or any other app sees it.

Ah thanks. that helps.

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#53

Post by majewsky »

drexlspivey wrote: post #19

I try to use Touch ID for everything it can be used for. Touch ID for sudo http://osxdaily.com/2017/11/22/use-touch-id-sudo-mac/ Touch ID for SSH https://github.com/sekey/sekey (uses secure enclave) I use this for 2FA https://krypt.co/ (uses secure enclave on your phone) Touch ID for password management https://1password.com/ I upload dotfiles and other credentials in a keybase encrypted repo

So I assume your threat model is exclusively keyloggers? It's certainly not physical access. Your fingerprints are all over the device's surface, so a determined attacker can easily duplicate them. (And to a non-determined attacker, Touch ID does not make much of a difference to passwords.)

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#54

Post by pfranz »

cerberusss wrote: post #23
icedchai wrote: post #9

Full disk encryption, that's it. When I get up, I lock the screen.

To add to this: the shortcut key for locking the screen is Cmd+Ctrl+Q. There's also the possibility of configuring a Hot Corner for this.

I use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to put my screen to sleep (which locks it).

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#55

Post by cerberusss »

pfranz wrote: post #54
cerberusss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this: the shortcut key for locking the screen is Cmd+Ctrl+Q. There's also the possibility of configuring a Hot Corner for this.

I use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to put my screen to sleep (which locks it).

Is this a default shortcut key?

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#56

Post by tinus_hn »

lukewrites wrote: post #20

The thin I do that I think is most important is use Little Snitch ( https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html ) to track/block/approve incoming and outgoing network requests. It's how I caught a new Seagate external hard drive making calls to Baidu and Google. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641

> When it loads, the disk is unwritable

This is where you put the disk back in the box and return it for a full refund.

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#58

Post by actionowl »

lukewrites wrote: post #20

The thin I do that I think is most important is use Little Snitch ( https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html ) to track/block/approve incoming and outgoing network requests. It's how I caught a new Seagate external hard drive making calls to Baidu and Google. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641

+1 for Little Snitch, it's a bit overwhelming at first but totally eye-opening. After a few days you'll have a good ruleset going and it won't be as annoying.

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure your Mac?

#59

Post by tinco »

majewsky wrote: post #53
drexlspivey wrote: post #19

I try to use Touch ID for everything it can be used for. Touch ID for sudo http://osxdaily.com/2017/11/22/use-touch-id-sudo-mac/ Touch ID for SSH https://github.com/sekey/sekey (uses secure enclave) I use this for 2FA https://krypt.co/ (uses secure enclave on your phone) Touch ID for password management https://1password.com/ I upload dotfiles and other credentials in a keybase encrypted repo

So I assume your threat model is exclusively keyloggers? It's certainly not physical access. Your fingerprints are all over the device's surface, so a determined attacker can easily duplicate them. (And to a non-determined attacker, Touch ID does not make much of a difference to passwords.)

Having your ssh key password protected would be a lot more annoying than having them touch id protected. The threat model would be someone using your Mac if you left it unlocked for a minute or something.
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