Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Assume your devices are compromised

go350.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 197 posts

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#151

Post by stuckkeys »

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 forgot my master password two days after. I thought I had stored it someplace and my guess the phone shaked after typing the master key and it undid the characters. FML moment. Spent a week resetting passwords. I only set passwords once. We use bitwarden. It was a pretty fuckery.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#152

Post by nickjj »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #6
vmoore wrote: post #2

I routinely prune /home of sensitive info, and often move secrets into a Cryptomator or Veracrypt vault. I also compartmentalize my workflow. One for NSFW stuff, another for work, another for playing games, and the list goes on...I do this because a compromise of one system does not mean a compromise of my entire system. Virtual machines are great for this alongside Chrome/Firefox profiles for different things. How y…

How do you compartmentalize? With VMs or setting up different profiles?

I think there's varying degrees depending on what your goal is. Besides VMs you could have a different user login for each compartment which means things like browser profiles, shell history and other things will get their own settings.

I record a lot of videos and wrote a little script[0] to help backup and restore my shell history to avoid auto-complete and CTRL + r searches from showing sensitive info (client work, etc.) while recording. I only use one browser for recording which has its own history too.

For my use case that's enough separation, for others it might not be. For example I still need to be careful about running commands like `docker image ls` on video because it has potential to show client work. I just remember to black out sensitive info during editing if it happens to come up.

[0]: https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/0076e508403c9981e393...

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#153

Post by kirbyfan64sos »

taeric wrote: post #102
ryukafalz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flatpak portals are cool so long as you don't mind manually approving all file access And by “manually approving all file access” you mean “opening the file in the file picker like normal”, right? There are some apps where using a file picker at all is awkward, but I’d argue in most applications it’s basically what you’d do anyway. Certainly most applications that non-developers would use. The bigger problem is tha…

I remember my first time using a photo application in a flatpak, I had no idea how to get images it saved to a place I could then upload with my browser. It was rather frustrating.

Worth noting that Chromium upstream has support for the portals now, so this should be mostly fixed for that specific scenario.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#154

Post by orangepurple »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #149
colordrops wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I first focused on setting up a homelab and de-googling my phone and whatnot for privacy reasons, but it's nearly impossible to not be spied on. You can certainly reduce it. In the end I'm still doing this for data sovereignty more than for privacy now, but I don't mind the boost in (imperfect) privacy.

Well, you gain privacy from corporations. You have to keep your software up-to-date, though, or you risk losing privacy to hackers.

Or you can simply run an application level default-deny firewall and never use a web browser. You don't need to keep your software up-to-date in a homelab.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#155

Post by neverminder »

stuckkeys wrote: post #151
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 forgot my master password two days after. I thought I had stored it someplace and my guess the phone shaked after typing the master key and it undid the characters. FML moment. Spent a week resetting passwords. I only set passwords once. We use bitwarden. It was a pretty fuckery.

This is why I have so far avoided password managers: single point of failure. What if you forget your master password. Or worse - what if your master password is stolen?

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#156

Post by orangepurple »

g3rv4 wrote: post #52
phphphphp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shamir Secret Sharing could be the answer you're looking for... I'm sleeping better at night here's a quick blog post I wrote with my plan. The app is trivial to write if you find a library for your preferred language https://g3rv4.com/2022/04/a-plan-for-my-secrets

If you lose your memory you better have instructions written clearly on paper not some app which you won't remember how to build or install

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#157

Post by hda111 »

greesil wrote: post #14
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…

Does chrome OS do this?

For using normal Linux applications, Chrome OS uses Linux Containers (LXD) running inside a VM.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#159

Post by eadmund »

walterbell wrote: post #10
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…

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 only works if you are running a trusted OS atop that hardware, and you simply cannot trust proprietary software. Apple do not permit iOS users to run any software they desire, and attempted to run spyware on all iOS devices; I think one cannot trust them not to have a backdoor in any 'secure' execution environment.

Now, if Linux or OpenBSD released support for that hardware, you might be able to trust it.

Re: Assume your devices are compromised

#160

Post by wintermutestwin »

neverminder wrote: post #155
stuckkeys wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot my master password two days after. I thought I had stored it someplace and my guess the phone shaked after typing the master key and it undid the characters. FML moment. Spent a week resetting passwords. I only set passwords once. We use bitwarden. It was a pretty fuckery.

This is why I have so far avoided password managers: single point of failure. What if you forget your master password. Or worse - what if your master password is stolen?

... or what if you are traveling and your phone and laptop are lost or stolen?
Post reply on HN