"Compromised" meaning that malware hasn't been installed or that it's not being accessed by malicious third parties. This could be at the BIOS, firmware, OS, app or any other other level.
Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
1–10 of 469 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#2You should assume all devices are compromised
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#3You really can't, anymore. You can watch traffic and hope that anything nasty isn't communicating with the outside world, but then there's all sorts of side channels that you may not know to watch.
At some point you just have to admit there's limits to privacy and work with them. You paper journal could be stolen and read / rewritten too, yaknow? It's not a new problem, its just in a new context.
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#4You should assume all devices are compromised
Not helpful
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#5Noone has drained my crypto from my wallets yet.
So either my personal machine is not compromised, or they think the amount of crypto in the wallets is too low.
Jokes on them though, cause I am moving my crypto to a hardware wallet eventually
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#6I'm reasonably sure that my personal machine is less compromised than the average, but I can't and will never be able to ensure that it is not compromised because I have no way to know everything the machine trying to do. This remains true even when you have an entirely free and directly inspectable hardware; you simply have no knowledge and time to verify everything. Just keep a reasonable amount of precaution and skepticism.
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#7Reminds me of the time I was watching a creepypasta horror movie about some guy who gets strange phone calls and my phone rang.
I think this guy had gotten my phone number from my HN profile and he thought I might be able to help him. He thought his android phone was infected by malware and he knew who did it. I told him the people who repair cell phones at the mall could do a system reset on his phone…. Unless he was dealing with state-level actors in which case it might be an advanced persistent threat and it might be permanent.
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#8You should assume all devices are compromised
*compromisable
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#9Here's a short, fairly practical guide that you might find helpful: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/files/Cyber-Essentials-Requirements-.... It is aimed mostly at small businesses, but I find a lot of the guidance to be pretty relevant to my personal IT.
My even shorter (and incomplete) summary of the document would be: configure your router and firewall; remove default passwords and crapware from your devices; use a lock screen; don't run as root; use a password manager and decent passwords; enable 2FA everywhere you can; enable anti-malware if your OS has it built it; don't run software from untrusted sources; patch regularly.
There are also other controls that you can choose to impose on yourself. For example, I require full-disk encryption, and I will only use mobile devices which get regular updates. Would be interested in hearing other things that HN'ers do to limit risk.
Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?
#10Noone has drained my crypto from my wallets yet. So either my personal machine is not compromised, or they think the amount of crypto in the wallets is too low. Jokes on them though, cause I am moving my crypto to a hardware wallet eventually
Quite an interesting honeypot really.