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PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

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Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#21

Post by codetrotter »

rafael859 wrote: post #15

Nice, pretty cool stuff. In high-school I worked on something similar ( https://github.com/rafket/pam_duress ), though this seems to have a somewhat cleaner implementation which is nice to see, and hopefully a more eager maintainer.

I’m reading the readme of your project, and got to the part where it says

> for example a mail could be automatically sent from his computer to a rescuer, a script could delete sensitive files in his hard-disk or a certain Rick Astley song could be appropriately played

And I’m just imagining someone having set two duress passwords; one for kidnapping situations and one that they put there as a joke. And then they get kidnapped and they try to input the one supposed to call for help, but they misremember so they input the rickroll trigger instead.

And the kidnappers are like “hey what the hell, you think this is funny man? turn that off” and the kidnapped person cries for having messed up their one chance at calling for help.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#22

Post by loup-vaillant »

t0mas88 wrote: post #9

You could set this up with three possible passwords, #1 for normal login, #2 for what looks like normal login but deletes most sensitive things and #3 that wipes the disk encryption keys and reboots. If forced by criminals or a not so free government enter #2 and pretend everything is normal. If pressured by the US or EU government with your lawyer present enter #3, see it fail and claim you forgot the encryption key…

Using #3 could land you in jail indefinitely in the UK I believe: if they don’t believe you forgot the password, they can interpret that as a refusal to give them the password (or unlock the computer), and jail you for this… until you give them the password.

Which you can’t, because there is no password at this point. So either you admit that you just wiped your computer with the panic password, or you can shut up and rot in jail until you die.

You need a way to make them believe you. Covertly wiping your computer is probably not going to end well.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#24

Post by jrockway »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #22
t0mas88 wrote: post #9

You could set this up with three possible passwords, #1 for normal login, #2 for what looks like normal login but deletes most sensitive things and #3 that wipes the disk encryption keys and reboots. If forced by criminals or a not so free government enter #2 and pretend everything is normal. If pressured by the US or EU government with your lawyer present enter #3, see it fail and claim you forgot the encryption key…

Using #3 could land you in jail indefinitely in the UK I believe: if they don’t believe you forgot the password, they can interpret that as a refusal to give them the password (or unlock the computer), and jail you for this… until you give them the password. Which you can’t, because there is no password at this point. So either you admit that you just wiped your computer with the panic password, or you can shut up an…

Depends on the crime, I guess. If you face execution for murder or treason because of the data on your hard drive, life in prison is an upgrade.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#25

Post by DangitBobby »

This could result in serious personal harm if the individual(s) causing the duress sense something is up, which they almost certainly will if things start magically disappearing or locking up. You better make sure that whatever you are protecting with this is more important than your personal safety.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#26

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

luismedel wrote: post #18
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #7

It's a very cool idea, but I think it would be most useful if applied to things like phones. I suspect most people pressed for passwords, are using a GUI system.

Exactly. It would be great to have a secondary pin (or my middle finger fingerprint, for example) in my phone to enter in a dummy environment with a few games, some family pics and so.

It would need to be baked into the OS. With FaceID, I guess I could use eyes crossed, as a queue.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#27

Post by ascar »

> This is transparent to the person coersing the password from the user as the duress password will grant authentication and drop to the user's shell.

I would assume the user shouldn't understand that he was given a duress password, so is transparent the right term here?

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#28

Post by jeroenhd »

intellix wrote: post #14
f1refly wrote: post #8

There's always a big issue with systems like this: Any sophisticated attacker will have an image of the machine he's trying to get into at hand to stop exactly what this pam module is trying to achieve from happening. All this would do is make you appear in a worse light to the deciding judge when it comes to trial or get your other kneecap shattered in a not so civil situation.

So you're saying if I'm held at gunpoint or forced to surrender my password at the US airport that a password to clear my account of anything would be useless? Neither of them know anything about me. It reminds me of the Trezor hardware wallet that allows you to have multiple passwords into your account. If your forced to give access you can log into the version with little in it. Nobody knows that you have secondary…

If you're held under gunpoint, that script that wipes your entire hard drive will only make your day worse.

AFAIK if you actually get detained and questioned at airports, your drive will already get imaged before any password is even tried. You may be able to get away with this on a mobile device where this feature isn't generally expected (because who uses Linux on a smartphone in the first place).

I always wonder at what scenarios like these are supposed to be about. If saying no is not an option, pissing off your captors by giving them fake info probably isn't either.

I don't know what law enforcement would be looking for on my work drive, but if saying no is no longer an option, my encryption password isn't worth getting shot over.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#29

Post by oasisbob »

Training is very important in duress systems.

I once worked in a place with a keypad duress code on the security system. If you prefixed your security PIN with NN-, it was the duress version of the code and would trigger a silent alarm.

This was setup long-ago, and not communicated. One night, the keypad was acting glitchy. Partially out of frustration (countdown is running), and partially to test, I ended up accidentally engaging the duress code by tapping a convenient corner number, which resulted in NNNNNNNNN-PIN.

After law enforcement had surrounded the building, a quick chat and search alongside a few officers got it all sorted.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#30

Post by bredren »

DangitBobby wrote: post #25

This could result in serious personal harm if the individual(s) causing the duress sense something is up, which they almost certainly will if things start magically disappearing or locking up. You better make sure that whatever you are protecting with this is more important than your personal safety.

I think they would be more likely to notice that you did not put up enough fight. Most people are not great actors.

Also, if you're being physically compelled to provide a passwords it seems your personal safety is already compromised.

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