Assume your devices are compromised • Hacker News Board

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#31

Post by philjohn » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 9:37 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #29

CameronNemo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you forgot your password manager master password? Short of brain damage, I don't think that would ever happen. It would be a hassle for my family if I died, though. I'm young, but I should still get that scenario worked out.

With a death certificate, you don't need passwords, or even account numbers, to access savings, accounts at fiscal types of businesses. It helps pf course, to have account info, but just knowing the place of business is typically enough. For clarity, living people lose account numbers and access all the time. The death cert. gives you this same power.

Not for, eg, lastpass.

Your master password is the key that decrypts your password vault.

Some sort of escrow would be good, that unlocks a document with access instructions upon receipt of a valid death certificate.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#32

Post by benlivengood » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

While it's quite likely to have a device I own compromised at some point it's less likely for everything to be compromised at once. My phone can access some backends, my laptop can access some others. Full backups are accessible from either. 2-factor authentication makes compromise of all accounts less likely.

It should be possible, for someone who wants a very low chance of losing all their data, to remember 2 or 3 passphrases and compartmentalize access to servers and backups such that most backups are pull instead of push (or have restricted permission ala 'zfs allow') and compromising everything requires attacking multiple platforms all at once.

Make sure it's possible to access everything starting from fresh installs on fresh hardware; once it's clear that one device has been compromised it's best policy to begin fresh on all devices as soon as possible and then start restoring from backups. Have some offline backups.

To be fair, convenience trumps some of these guidelines. Security is hard and only organizations can achieve a high level of resilience since brain backups don't exist yet.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#33

Post by hsbauauvhabzb » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

I see a lot of trust in VMs, but jailbreaks exist, in the future I anticipate more spectre/meltdown type vulns, or even physics based attacks like rowhammer. Assuming my threat model was infinite, can I really trust vms?

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#34

Post by ur-whale » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

air gapped tails running on a 1999 x86 box ftw

https://tails.boum.org/

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#35

Post by phphphphp » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #3

These are fun thought experiments, but I think having a personal Disaster Recovery plan is a far more applicable security exercise. What would you do if you lost your phone? If you were locked out of your google account? If you forgot your password manager master password? If your home was destroyed in a fire? Having a secure plan for quickly recovering from these scenarios is more important than trying to keep state…

I debate this with myself often. Short of renting a security box and telling people I trust about it, I haven’t come up with a strategy for the master password. At the moment, I’ve resigned myself to the feeling that if I lose my memory, maybe it’ll be the opportunity for a fresh start, and so losing everything is a feature not a bug.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#36

Post by FabHK » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

mhoad wrote: post #23

roastedpeacock wrote: post #4

The lack of per-application isolation with desktops is one of those ugly truths people try and sweep under the rug. I foresee two potential solutions to this. 1) Run everything in a VM like Qubes (essentially nerfs certain application like 3D acceleration without major R&D) 2) Utilize some container runtime to provide isolation for legacy applications and stub out features such as filesystem calls so they do not to b…

Fuschia from Google also looks to have a very good solution to this problem but is probably still a couple of years away.

They should really pick a name that's easier to spell...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#37

Post by girzel » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #3

These are fun thought experiments, but I think having a personal Disaster Recovery plan is a far more applicable security exercise. What would you do if you lost your phone? If you were locked out of your google account? If you forgot your password manager master password? If your home was destroyed in a fire? Having a secure plan for quickly recovering from these scenarios is more important than trying to keep state…

All of my passwords are in the "pass" command line utility, where they're encrypted with gpg. I added my brother's gpg key as an encryption target, and his ssh key onto the sever where the git repo is stored, locked down to the git shell command. In the event of my untimely demise, my wife tells him the url of the git repo.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#38

Post by megous » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

roastedpeacock wrote: post #4

The lack of per-application isolation with desktops is one of those ugly truths people try and sweep under the rug. I foresee two potential solutions to this. 1) Run everything in a VM like Qubes (essentially nerfs certain application like 3D acceleration without major R&D) 2) Utilize some container runtime to provide isolation for legacy applications and stub out features such as filesystem calls so they do not to b…

Per-application isolation sounds completely unworkable for a developer.

Maybe per-customer isolation, or per-usecase isolation.

Isolating customer work (or use case like "production deployment") into separate UNIX user accounts works fairly reasonably.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#39

Post by mhoad » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #36

mhoad wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuschia from Google also looks to have a very good solution to this problem but is probably still a couple of years away.

They should really pick a name that's easier to spell... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

I should stop posting while drinking wine too it seems :)

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#40

Post by chrisweekly » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

phphphphp wrote: post #35

daenz wrote: post #3

These are fun thought experiments, but I think having a personal Disaster Recovery plan is a far more applicable security exercise. What would you do if you lost your phone? If you were locked out of your google account? If you forgot your password manager master password? If your home was destroyed in a fire? Having a secure plan for quickly recovering from these scenarios is more important than trying to keep state…

I debate this with myself often. Short of renting a security box and telling people I trust about it, I haven’t come up with a strategy for the master password. At the moment, I’ve resigned myself to the feeling that if I lose my memory, maybe it’ll be the opportunity for a fresh start, and so losing everything is a feature not a bug.

I wrote mine down and put it in an envelope containing a few other secrets in a small fire-resistant, waterproof safe which my wife knows how to open.