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PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

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Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#101

Post by amelius »

necovek wrote: post #75

There are multiple levels of protection one might want. I.e. when you are being selected for random questioning entering US as a non-US citizen, you'd benefit from steganography-like approach: you give a password, and relatively bland, non-personal stuff shows up, giving appearance of full access to a system. If you only care about your privacy, the next one is to have a destroy-everything script (and it's not that h…

Of course James Bond would have an unlock + wait 10 seconds + explode option ...

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#103

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

tazjin wrote: post #35
mgerdts wrote: post #17

The company that was pitching my employer retina scanners on data center doors 20 years ago had an idea like this. Left eye gets you in, right eye gets you in and alerts security.

As long as the sides are the employee's choice (i.e. the threat actor needs to not be able to know which eye is the duress one).

And you'd want to hide the eye choosing/scanning process so nobody could just watch an employee to figure out their preference.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#104

Post by Spooky23 »

yosito wrote: post #87

Comments are full of gunpoint scenarios, but I think a far more likely scenario for most HN readers is law enforcement / customs agents asking you to unlock your device during travel or some other random checkpoint so they can scan it. In that case, I doubt the officer would even have a clue about the use of a duress password to selectively and silently delete some private data. I think the biggest risk would be that…

In the US, at minimum you’re lying to a federal agent. Never a good idea.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#105

Post by muti »

yosito wrote: post #87

Comments are full of gunpoint scenarios, but I think a far more likely scenario for most HN readers is law enforcement / customs agents asking you to unlock your device during travel or some other random checkpoint so they can scan it. In that case, I doubt the officer would even have a clue about the use of a duress password to selectively and silently delete some private data. I think the biggest risk would be that…

"You could even spawn a process to remove the pam_duress module so the threat actor won't be able to see if the duress module was available"

This scenario was considered by the author

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#106

Post by yosito »

Spooky23 wrote: post #104
yosito wrote: post #87

Comments are full of gunpoint scenarios, but I think a far more likely scenario for most HN readers is law enforcement / customs agents asking you to unlock your device during travel or some other random checkpoint so they can scan it. In that case, I doubt the officer would even have a clue about the use of a duress password to selectively and silently delete some private data. I think the biggest risk would be that…

In the US, at minimum you’re lying to a federal agent. Never a good idea.

I don't know the legal implications, but if the duress password unlocks your device and simply deletes a directory or two, and the officer only asked you to unlock your device (without a warrant, by the way), how is that lying?

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#107

Post by yosito »

muti wrote: post #105
yosito wrote: post #87

Comments are full of gunpoint scenarios, but I think a far more likely scenario for most HN readers is law enforcement / customs agents asking you to unlock your device during travel or some other random checkpoint so they can scan it. In that case, I doubt the officer would even have a clue about the use of a duress password to selectively and silently delete some private data. I think the biggest risk would be that…

"You could even spawn a process to remove the pam_duress module so the threat actor won't be able to see if the duress module was available" This scenario was considered by the author

Ah, thanks! I didn't read closely enough.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#108

Post by packet_nerd »

necovek wrote: post #75

There are multiple levels of protection one might want. I.e. when you are being selected for random questioning entering US as a non-US citizen, you'd benefit from steganography-like approach: you give a password, and relatively bland, non-personal stuff shows up, giving appearance of full access to a system. If you only care about your privacy, the next one is to have a destroy-everything script (and it's not that h…

> I.e. when you are being selected for random questioning entering US as a non-US citizen, you'd benefit from steganography-like approach: you give a password, and relatively bland, non-personal stuff shows up, giving appearance of full access to a system.

Is there a practical way to implement this today with Linux? I know VeraCrypt supports hidden operating systems, but I think only Windows?

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#109

Post by eps »

koolba wrote: post #96
mgerdts wrote: post #17

The company that was pitching my employer retina scanners on data center doors 20 years ago had an idea like this. Left eye gets you in, right eye gets you in and alerts security.

Could also blink Morse code. It’s been done before: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rufnWLVQcKg

If you wonder whether it's a video of an american pow blinking "torture" during an interview - yes, it is.

Re: PAM Duress – Alternate passwords for panic situations

#110

Post by sabas123 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #93
lxgr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would being security conscious automatically disqualify biometrics? Security is all about threat models, and I can imagine quite a few scenarios where biometrics might fare better than passwords. Shoulder surfing and trivial passwords/PINs come to mind, for example. And who said that it's biometrics vs. anything else? It's quite advisable to combine authentication factors.

Shoulder surfing and weak passwords are both something you can control at any time. Biometric identification can be exploited involuntarily by someone literally using force to apply your finger to a device or similar. I shouldn't need to say this, it's so obvious that it's a common plot device in action movies.

And with a little bit more force they beat the password out of me anyway regardless which system I use...
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