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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?

#341

Post by lumb63 »

b112 wrote: post #322
lumb63 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t discuss my former role in too much detail, but it has convinced me that all the above is insufficient in a number of very realistic threat models. One issue is that software has vulnerabilities and bugs. I’m not talking about the software that users run in sandboxes environments. I’m talking about the sandboxes environments. I’m talking about cryptography implementations. I’m talking about the firmware runnin…

Why do companies tell users to “trust them” without any proof they are trustworthy? You know the answer here, they are not to be trusted. Samsung phones, for example, have a gpsd, which phones home at random times. This runs as root, ignores vpn settings (so no netguard for you!), and if it is just getting updated agps info, it sure seems to send a lot of data for that. So no, they don't want a legitly auditable devi…

It is also worth mentioning, since I didn’t realize it until I worked in depth in the space: your CPU is not the only place to execute code, or the only place with access to hardware.

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

#342

Post by charcircuit »

tete wrote: post #170
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 I talked to a security researcher specializing on Android at a conference and he didn't sound like he'd agree. While I personally think ChromiumOS does a good job, I think a huge problem is that the issue is in how liberally complexity is added. And complexity is typically where security issues lurk. This has been seen again and agai…

OpenBSD doesn't have proper sandboxing. If you download malware it can easily steal and upload your ssh keys.

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

#343

Post by friendlyHornet »

anonym29 wrote: post #139
friendlyHornet wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> refuse to connect directly websites protected by cloudflare What do you do in case you want to use a website protected by cloudflare?

There are many ways to do this, most utilizing some kind of proxy-like architecture for all requests, or just to retrieve cookies. My personal favorite for retrieving cookies is FlareSolverr. For strictly reading public webpages, public paywall bypass tools and archive sites work pretty well.

Thank you!

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

#344

Post by hdivider »

anonym29 wrote: post #120

I assume it is, per Intel ME / AMD PSP's ability to read everything - memory, CPU registers, disk, inspect all network traffic, directly utilize onboard GbE for bidirectional communication. For adversaries below the level of the US intelligence agencies, I run everything virtualized and compartmentalized with Qubes, the installation image for which I verified the dev-provided cryptographic signature matches. I try to…

May I ask what necessitates this level of security? E.g. work, or personal preference in terms of security and privacy?

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

#345

Post by charcircuit »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #143
gkbrk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the apps sandboxed, how can installing an app cause breaches? As far as I know, iOS apps are sandboxed. Either the sandbox is very weak and Apple instead relies on App Store audits, or they disallow users installing apps outside the app store to protect their 30% tax that makes them a LOT of money.

The sandboxes are regularly breached. Basically any time you hear about people "rooting" their phones, that's an intentional sandbox breach.

Not always. Unlocking the bootloader doesn't breach the sandbox since it factory resets the device.

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

#346

Post by mtsr »

mindslight wrote: post #223
lrvick wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO we have to step back and be honest that the Linux kernel is simply not equipped to run trusted code and untrusted code in the same memory. New bugs are found every few weeks. If history is of any guide Android and ChromiumOS likely still have many critical bugs the public does not know about yet. Sadly the only choice is to burn extra ram to give every security context a dedicated kernel and virtual machine. Hype…

I've never used Qubes. Rather I heavily segment with manually configured VMs. The ones that run proprietary software (eg webbrowsing, MSWin, etc) generally run on a different machine than my main desktop. It's quite convenient as I can go from my office to the couch, and I just open up the same VMs there and continue doing what I was doing. I define the network access for each VM in a spreasheet (local services and I…

Thinking of my kids' future has also made me much more energy-conscious. Meaning I've stopped running my VM host 24/7 like I was, because neither ESX nor Proxmox is really set up for saving energy easily (automated suspending and waking, etc). Which is a shame, since I'm actually finding that with gigabit fiber at home, even on mobile connections I can work pretty decently on homelab VMs.

Running something like it on a laptop directly makes sense, but I worry about bringing some workloads back to my laptop that I really prefer to keep off it. In terms of raw performance my laptop isn't even close, especially with heavy graphic workloads. And then there's heat, etc.

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

#347

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

Nobody cares enough about me to target me, and I don't run Windows. That excludes like 99.99% of possibilities.

Android, on the other hand... I have installed apps I didn't know much about, and that store is full of malware, so I have no idea.

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

#348

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

lcall wrote: post #315
solarpunk wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This page has stuck with me since I read it regarding openbsd. It's a bit mean spirited, but I think openbsd mostly benefits from its own obscurity. https://isopenbsdsecu.re/ But the nice parts of ChromeOS, as far as security properties go are the way it can be "power washed" between usages. Along with a desktop Linux system that has less binaries installed at it's base than most. And things that are built in are typ…

No other general-purpose OS that runs on my laptop has the track record of OpenBSD: only 2 remotely exploitable security holes in the default installation since ~1996. And then the other mitigations let you control carefully what more attack surface to expose--those mitigations dramatically reduce it. I appreciate the general lack of privilege escalation 0-day exploits, as seen over time.

Serious question: How big is OpenBSD as a target for malware, exploits, viruses, etc. ?

OpenBSD's track record is impressive but is it a significant target compared to Windows, MacOS, and Linux?

It is easy to say "only two bullets have ever penetrated my armor" when hardly anyone is shooting at you. I do not know if this is the case because I have never used OpenBSD and I do not know how widely it is used (headless servers, embedded devices, etc.).

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

#349

Post by fbdab103 »

jl6 wrote: post #61
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a backup NAS that's normally powered off, but it's scheduled to turn on, perform backup, shut down. It doesn't wake on LAN and there should be no way of knowing it exists outside of checking DHCP static addresses reservations - and now that I mention it, maybe I should remove it from there too. This minimises the size of the window, and network-snoopable information, required to compromise this set of backups.

If your main computer has had all its files encrypted by ransomware, will the backup NAS know not to replace the good backup with a bad one? i.e. hopefully it's not doing something like `rsync --delete`.

Restic is my current backup solution of choice and that takes snapshots by default. If you took a backup on Monday, ransomwared on Tuesday, your backup volume would double in size (file de-duplication is going to fail spectacularly), but the Monday backup will be unimpacted until a prune operation is run. Suggested prune workflow is to maintain fairly staggered snapshots eg: 1x six-months ago, 1x three-months ago, 3x from last month, whatever makes you comfortable. Which should give a pretty comfortable margin on retaining your files.

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

#350

Post by jazzyjackson »

charcircuit wrote: post #342
tete wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android and ChromiumOS are likely the most trustable computing platforms out there I talked to a security researcher specializing on Android at a conference and he didn't sound like he'd agree. While I personally think ChromiumOS does a good job, I think a huge problem is that the issue is in how liberally complexity is added. And complexity is typically where security issues lurk. This has been seen again and agai…

OpenBSD doesn't have proper sandboxing. If you download malware it can easily steal and upload your ssh keys.

> proper sandboxing

Do jails not fulfill this?

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