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Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#281

Post by mysterydip »

goodpoint wrote: post #267
ignoramous wrote: post #111

ex-AOSP dev here Android and ChromiumOS are likely the most trustable computing platforms out there; doubly so for Android running on Pixels. If you don't prefer the ROM Google ships with, you can flash GrapheneOS or CalyxOS and relock the bootloader. Pixels have several protections in place: - Hardware root of trust: This is the anchor on which the entire TCB (trusted computing base) is built. - Cryptographic verifi…

...assuming you blindly trust google. The same company that sends on average 12 MB of telemetries a day from android devices.

Do you have a link for that? I'd love to send it to some friends.

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#283

Post by derkades »

pontilanda wrote: post #167
ignoramous wrote: post #111

ex-AOSP dev here Android and ChromiumOS are likely the most trustable computing platforms out there; doubly so for Android running on Pixels. If you don't prefer the ROM Google ships with, you can flash GrapheneOS or CalyxOS and relock the bootloader. Pixels have several protections in place: - Hardware root of trust: This is the anchor on which the entire TCB (trusted computing base) is built. - Cryptographic verifi…

All that looks good on paper, but a lot of apps require full disk access and can easily run in the background, so how "trustable" can that really be in practice? With iOS at least I know that apps really are sandboxed and cannot access anything unless I grant permission. No app can ever attempt to access my photos unless I explicitly pick a photo or grant partial/total access. Even then it's read-only or "write with…

In recent years, I have not seen any app request full file access permissions besides file managers

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#284

Post by marcosdumay »

px43 wrote: post #251
lrvick wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is a security shit show but it is at least publicly auditable, which is a prerequisite to form reasonably confidence in the security of software, or to rapidly correct mistakes found. OpenBSD by contrast has dual auditing and a stellar security reputation, but development is much slower and compatibility is very low. seL4 as an extreme is a micro-kernel with mathematically provable security by design, but no wo…

In the case of seL4, don't confuse formal verification with security. The code matches the spec, and security properties can be extracted very precisely, but spec might contain oversights/bugs which would allow an attacker to perform unexpected behaviors. If you define security as a "lack of exploitable bugs", then security can never be proven, because it's impossible to prove a negative. Also many formally verified…

Besides spec bugs, the seL4 treat model is focused on making sure components are kept isolated. They do not deal with most of what we understand as attacks on a workstation at all.

In fact, in a seL4 system, most of the vulnerabilities we find on Linux wouldn't even be on the kernel, and their verification logic can't test something that isn't there.

That said, the seL4 model does probably lead to much better security than the Linux one. It's just not as good as the OP's one-liner implies.

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#285

Post by ylk »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #271
ylk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if everyone is wrong about the effectiveness of Android’s mitigations? Then iOS would be more secure. Could you please make concrete a point?

You asked why we would need to verify things he said. I explained it quite concretely. What part did you not understand? Edit: whether people are wrong about android security is orthogonal and whataboutism

My android comment was taking yours, turning it around and taking it to the extreme to illustrate a point.

And no, I never asked why we would need to verify the security researcher’s claims (but sure, you should).

1. Dma54rhs says Apple’s (!) claims supposedly can’t be verified and that you need to take Apple’s word for it

2. I ask why not, provide a link to a talk about iOS security by a renown security researcher as both an example of how to verify Apple’s claims (reverse engineer iOS) and to lend some credence to the point that they are likely to be true

3. You talk about the researcher and/or programmers being wrong by replying with an “orthogonal” comment containing “whataboutism”.

Edit: Could we please talk about the actual topic? Do you or someone else know about instances where Apple lied about mitigations like lockdown mode before? Maybe there’s a long history of it and I just don’t know. Or is there some other flaw in my logic?

There is always the argument about hidden bugdoors, backdoored compilers or whatnot. But that’s not practical, by then you might as well stop using technology.

If Apple can’t be trusted then why can you trust google? Or Qualcomm?

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#286

Post by landemva »

andix wrote: post #278

Hopes and prayers? I think its completely impossible to make sure your machine is not compromised. You can just take the best effort to keep it clean. Try to use 2FA as much as possible. And try to shield the 2nd factor as good as possible from any connection to your other devices.

USA banks seem to have found the 2fa powerpoint presentation and are forcing accounts to use SMS 2fa, with no ability to use something like authenticator app. Nothing about SMS is secure, so their IT is taking a step backward.

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#287

Post by wintermutestwin »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #231
wintermutestwin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Given the most common network activity is web browsing, it seems like enabling protections in the browser is becoming mandatory for the security-conscious. What I am looking for is an easy way to run something like a LiveCD OS in a VM for browsing. The problem is that I have never found a decent LiveCD that has Firefox with all of the mandatory extensions (uBlock Origin, etc...). I guess I could customize my own Liv…

Windows AppGuard is close to this, although it’s a hyper-v silo not a full VM. Edge can open links in AppGuard (which is what this technology is called) right from the context menu, super convenient. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...

That sounds interesting and I like that Edge is one of the few browsers that has vertical tabs built in. The thing is that I don't trust MS and assume that they are thieving my data in any way they can...

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#288

Post by astrostl »

ignoramous wrote: post #111

ex-AOSP dev here Android and ChromiumOS are likely the most trustable computing platforms out there; doubly so for Android running on Pixels. If you don't prefer the ROM Google ships with, you can flash GrapheneOS or CalyxOS and relock the bootloader. Pixels have several protections in place: - Hardware root of trust: This is the anchor on which the entire TCB (trusted computing base) is built. - Cryptographic verifi…

> Android and ChromiumOS are likely the most trustable computing platforms out there

Sweet, so we can trust that our personal machine is only compromised by Google et al? XD

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#289

Post by andix »

landemva wrote: post #286
andix wrote: post #278

Hopes and prayers? I think its completely impossible to make sure your machine is not compromised. You can just take the best effort to keep it clean. Try to use 2FA as much as possible. And try to shield the 2nd factor as good as possible from any connection to your other devices.

USA banks seem to have found the 2fa powerpoint presentation and are forcing accounts to use SMS 2fa, with no ability to use something like authenticator app. Nothing about SMS is secure, so their IT is taking a step backward.

SMS is still better than no 2FA, but yes, it’s not secure at all.

What really bugs me, that some systems rely only on the 2nd factor, which replaces the password completely. Some even did that with SMS. So you put in you user name and then the SMS code. That’s really bad. Also a lot of Services disguise this method in the „I forgot my password“ function, where you can reset the password just with a sms code.

Re: Ask HN: How do you trust that your personal machine is not compromised?

#290

Post by landemva »

transpute wrote: post #40

Some OS mitigations: All: patch, encrypt, backup, track power, isolate workflow by device/VM Network: router with OSS firmware, workflow segmentation, reduce wireless iOS: (>A12 SoC) Lockdown mode, Brave w/o JS, daily reboot iOS: periodic reinstall from DFU mode, Apple Configurator / MDM policy macOS: hardening script based on workflow, outbound firewall Windows: Secured Core device + SystemGuard + App Guard VM isola…

For MS Windows, may also want to enable core isolation / memory integrity. Sadly, vendors typically don't enable it from the factory.

https://www.infotechnotes.com/2021/07/microsoft-windows-core...

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