What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…
Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
261–270 of 391 posts
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#262Why doesn’t this article include the packet capture or whatever data he has that shows exactly what’s being sent?
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#263What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…
What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, You cannot trust an OS you cannot build yourself. That's why I see Linux as the only option for professionals and privacy minded people.
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Linux there is OpenSnitch that does its job nicely, although I experienced some occasional desktop slowdowns even after training it to open everything for trusted programs. https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch I still recall the old days of Windows when I tried Kerio Personal Firewall and realized how much software already phoned home two decades ago. That was the last wake up call that pushed me into getting…
I second OpenSnitch, I haven't face any shutdowns due to it yet. For those coming from LittleSnitch on macOS might have to look into the finer details of the connection in the Allow/Deny dialog on OS to get the best results.
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, you can't. The issue is the "easy monitor outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL" part. It is not impossible but it is far from easy. If the application uses statically linked SSL client (as it should if it is commercially distributed) then you have to modify the application (for example in memory) to get a copy of everything that gets written to the SSL stream.
You know how you can do Ctrl+Shift+K in Firefox to open up the browser console and inspect all the bits of the page, see the code (and fuck with it), see all the network traffic, and so on? I dream of being able to do that for arbitrary applications. Imagine having a Super+Ctrl+Shift+K that opened an OS-level GUI showing all the pertinent details of the running program.
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#266I don't have PowerPoint on my computer so I don't know if it works without Internet connection. Can someone tell me what happens if there is no network access?
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
For Windows, check out simplewall, it does (almost) exactly that. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
It uses the windows firewall. Do I trust Windows firewall to block itself? NO!
> Keep in mind, simplewall is not a control UI over Windows Firewall, and does not interact in any level with Windows Firewall.
> It works over Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) which is a set of API and system services that provide a platform for creating network filtering applications. Windows Filtering Platform is a development technology and not a firewall itself, but simplewall is the tool that uses this technology.
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#268What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
For Windows, check out simplewall, it does (almost) exactly that. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
It uses the windows firewall. Do I trust Windows firewall to block itself? NO!
No:
"simplewall is not a control UI over Windows Firewall, and does not interact in any level with Windows Firewall"
Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
#270There's a pervasive lack of precision in privacy discussions. There's a difference between a network request that does some computation on the server side, one that does the same but may log errors and increment counters, and one that actually stores the data temporarily or for a long time. And in the last case, there's a difference between the data being nigh-impossible for internal employees to access (perhaps only…
Source: I have this blocked and I'm not missing anything.
If a feature needs to phone home, I don't need the feature.