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Assume your devices are compromised

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Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#111

Post by nanomonkey »

CameronNemo wrote: post #27
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…

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.

> Short of brain damage, I don't think that would ever happen.

Funny you say that. A year ago I went outside to break up a domestic violence situation. I woke up later face down with a brick next to my head. Due to the concussion I forgot my phone's password and that of my ATM card. It took me six months to remember them, although by then I had replaced both.

Shit happens.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#112

Post by Syonyk »

devdao wrote: post #53

QubesOS is obviously right and feels like home. Next we need a wave of great QubesOS-targetting hardware. And an equivalent for phones, too.

> And an equivalent for phones, too.

Or to stop putting so much trust in them, go back to "using them for communication with other people directly," and assume they're being evil, because if they're not at the OS level, than some app on them is.

I know they're convenient, I've had a smartphone for years, and have in the past 6 months or so gone back to a flip phone, in which the most interesting thing on it is a halfway complete contacts list and some regularly pruned text message threads (regularly pruned because whatever KaiOS uses for a SMS database gets slow if you don't od that).

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#113

Post by orblivion »

As for repository access, you could have one qube with github access. Your dev qube would not have github access, but it would have access to a private repository. Your guthub qube can pull from the private repo and push to github without ever running or installing any of the code.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#114

Post by hunter2_ »

dylan604 wrote: post #109
hunter2_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you offer some examples, besides financial accounts, of things that a person would prevent others from accessing while alive and grant access upon death? In sifting through the list of things in my password manager, none of them (besides finances) seem to have this quality. Seems like anything that should be seen by family after death could be seen by them before death as well.

Social Media accounts with private DMs are the first to pop in mind. Cloud storage like Dropbox/iCloud/Drive/etc. Lots of things really if you thing on it for just a minute or so

If someone DM'd me, they were probably expecting me to not share what they said. If I have stuff in cloud storage that could be useful to others, I'll share it now.

I'm sure there are use cases, but it's actually very hard for me to think of them, let alone in just a minute or so.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#115

Post by elesiuta »

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…

Something like fsverity could be a decent half solution. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FsVerityRPM

Of course you won't have that layer of isolation if something becomes compromised, but it should make it harder for malicious code to persist on your system without you knowing.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#116

Post by assttoasstmgr »

pontifier wrote: post #66

I contemplated building an airgapped secret machine that could only communicate data with outside machines via qr codes and a webcam. The main reason to do this isn't that the airgapped computer isn't compromised, but that even if it is, I could monitor all data moving in and out of it. Even a USB drive passed back and forth could secretly transfer data I don't know about. Secret data is so small compared to the size…

If only there were a method used daily in industry to move data back and forth from secure systems in a write-once fashion. Hear me out - you could construct some sort of polycarbonate disc that would contain a substrate. You could then permanently encode your data onto this substrate - so it couldn't be changed - with a "laser" perhaps. Then said disc could be read on another machine without worry of sneaky things hiding in your USB. On second thought that sounds way too complicated and I'd probably stick with the QR code-camera thing.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#117

Post by saagarjha »

KMag wrote: post #26
walterbell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple will likely launch Armv9 CPUs (iDevice A16 and MacBook M2) this year. If they don't enable CCA and memory tagging, then we have to wait for Armv9 support in QEMU and a future Qualcomm SoC, https://www.anandtech.com/show/16584/arm-announces-armv9-arc... > CCA introduces a new concept of dynamically created “realms”, which can be viewed as secured containerised execution environments that are completely opaque to…

That's great! The processor's hypervisor-like firmware should handle task switching, page table manipulation, etc, and the OS kernel should use upcalls to the firmware instead of needing to have various special-case paths for various minor hardware variants. Had the x86 BIOS been a bit better designed (and a bit more performant), we likely would have seen OS kernels leaning much harder on firmware that shipped with t…

Apple actually ships a proprietary ARM extension for lateral exception levels to help enforce kernel integrity, which includes gating access to code that fiddles with page tables.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#118

Post by pontifier »

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #116
pontifier wrote: post #66

I contemplated building an airgapped secret machine that could only communicate data with outside machines via qr codes and a webcam. The main reason to do this isn't that the airgapped computer isn't compromised, but that even if it is, I could monitor all data moving in and out of it. Even a USB drive passed back and forth could secretly transfer data I don't know about. Secret data is so small compared to the size…

If only there were a method used daily in industry to move data back and forth from secure systems in a write-once fashion. Hear me out - you could construct some sort of polycarbonate disc that would contain a substrate. You could then permanently encode your data onto this substrate - so it couldn't be changed - with a "laser" perhaps. Then said disc could be read on another machine without worry of sneaky things h…

Ok, the key advantage is being able to visually see the amount of data being transmitted. With a CD, how do you know an extra kilobyte of data didn't hitch a ride on your disc.

You do realize that viruses existed before networks right? Your "method used daily in industry" can very easily carry an unwanted payload.

I'm trying to explore the intersection of high security and utility.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#119

Post by saagarjha »

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 just spell it the rude word it shares the first three letters with, swap out the k with an h, and then add "sia" to the end.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#120

Post by pontifier »

airstrike wrote: post #70
pontifier wrote: post #66

I contemplated building an airgapped secret machine that could only communicate data with outside machines via qr codes and a webcam. The main reason to do this isn't that the airgapped computer isn't compromised, but that even if it is, I could monitor all data moving in and out of it. Even a USB drive passed back and forth could secretly transfer data I don't know about. Secret data is so small compared to the size…

Good luck https://www.zdnet.com/article/academics-turn-ram-into-wifi-c...

Wow, that article has a huge list of "data exfiltration channels" that are possible attack vectors.

This is an interesting problem, and I hope that I'm somehow able to trust again.

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