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Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

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Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#31

Post by wps »

drnick1 wrote: post #10

This underscores a major issue with commercial software like Steam and games obtained therein. You cannot trust that software not to maliciously scan your device for secrets such as crypto wallets or other information. Ideally, you want to run apps like Steam, Discord, Zoom and whatever else does not come from a trusted distribution repo as a separate user. This is not always convenient however, and the compromise I…

Agreed. I’ve always disliked having anything to do with gaming on my primary OS, always choosing to compartmentalize that stuff away from anything sensitive. The only exception is DRM free standalone games like Factorio, which has pretty safe mods compared to something like Minecraft.

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#32

Post by xboxnolifes »

charcircuit wrote: post #30
drnick1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice, but a cell phone isn't a viable gaming platform for anything but very basic games. And Android, at least in its typical Googled form, has its own set of problems; it's a privacy nightmare.

And despite what you claim it is the most profitable gaming platform. There are lessons you can learn from them.

Skinner boxes of MTX in peoples' pockets is a good business model. The lessons were learned, and gacha games are huge on PC.

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#33

Post by jallasprit »

drnick1 wrote: post #22
techjamie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you could change the steam command line fpr each game and have them launch in bubblewrap. Though I'm not sure how well that would play with graphics drivers. It might be friendly with AMD, but my experience is that NVIDIA is a pain to have play nice with containers.

I sandbox Steam itself for simplicity. My experience with Nvidia and Wayland has been good. I simply exposed /dev/nvidia*, a few networking-related files in /etc and system binaries like /usr.

How are you doing the sandboxing?

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#34

Post by xboxnolifes »

vorpalhex wrote: post #17
robotnikman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why didn't he just try find a job that pays $200k/year ? Probably was not able to get into MIT or another prestigious school that many of those companies look for on a resume.

None of my peers went to any school of note, nor did I. A fair bit of community college, some lower ranked state unis, and one guy did a bootcamp. All well above 200k.

Are you 21 like the person in the Article, or did you start multiple decades ago?

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#35

Post by drnick1 »

jallasprit wrote: post #33
drnick1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sandbox Steam itself for simplicity. My experience with Nvidia and Wayland has been good. I simply exposed /dev/nvidia*, a few networking-related files in /etc and system binaries like /usr.

How are you doing the sandboxing?

Bubblewrap.

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#36

Post by akimbostrawman »

drnick1 wrote: post #10

This underscores a major issue with commercial software like Steam and games obtained therein. You cannot trust that software not to maliciously scan your device for secrets such as crypto wallets or other information. Ideally, you want to run apps like Steam, Discord, Zoom and whatever else does not come from a trusted distribution repo as a separate user. This is not always convenient however, and the compromise I…

flatpak is the most convenient way to securely run steam on linux

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#38

Post by vorpalhex »

darksim905 wrote: post #26
vorpalhex wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of my peers went to any school of note, nor did I. A fair bit of community college, some lower ranked state unis, and one guy did a bootcamp. All well above 200k.

What do they do, _exactly_? Because in the real world out of YC, the rest of us can barely top $200,000 a year unless we move into management or Executive level roles.

Software engineers. None of us work for YC, we are based in Texas. No oil/gas, nor defense, nothing like that.

Years ago I had a recruiter that wanted to hawk me and I asked for 180k comp and he told me it was "impossible". Hung up, was hired at 185k a few weeks later. Wasn't even much of a negotiation when I asked for it.

1. Be willing to accept non-cash comp. Stock of various forms, etc. This works with later stage companies better for obvious reasons.

2. Go into all negotiations ready to explain to the other side what they are buying. Remain calm if not slightly bored. Repeat your ask as if the other side has forgotten them (that sort of bored, calm tone). Do not argue.

3. Actually deliver business value. None of this "Well that's not my job". If I need to fly to a datacenter and run a power off test, I will. If I need to mop the floor and wipe down the breakroom, I'll do that too. Own problems, not positions.

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#39

Post by tancop »

zuzululu wrote: post #5

He was smart/determined enough to risk it all. Why didn't he just try find a job that pays $200k/year ? Why play into the stereotypes ?

job market is insane today. its hard to find a job in retail in some places, software is way more competitive. retraining to some in demand trade takes money you might not have and its still not guaranteed success. and even if you get hired for a stable job theres no guarantee your company will let you work your way up to 200k when they know you cant afford to quit.

the uncertainty of crime is better than endless waiting for an offer that might never come. if you take 10 scammers or drug dealers one of them will get rich, 3 will go to prison and the rest have a relatively normal life. that might be genuinely better odds than a mainstream career for some.

Re: Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware

#40

Post by tancop »

HDBaseT wrote: post #15
LoganDark wrote: post #7

I heard Monero can help against blockchain analysis (though less so if you buy from adversaries). Unfortunately it looks like blockchain analysis was not the attack vector here, but rather buying gift cards through an incompetent intermediary.

Not really an "incompetent intermediary", Bitrefill, the company used for buying gift cards with Bitcoin received legal requests to identify the user. Bitrefill doesn't proclaim insane privacy protections, they are based out of Sweden but aren't immune to being requested to provide the information. Monero could of helped, although its not easy to transfer BTC to Monero without P2P trades, as effectively every exchang…

thats why btc/monero is not as great as a lot of people think.

ethereum has stablecoins and dex swaps so you dont have to do p2p once you have any tokens in the ecosystem, all you need is some eth to pay gas fees. and its the only crypto project i trust completely.

for privacy theres railgun and aztec, both have canonical bridges back to layer 1 and enough users to give you correlation resistance. tornado cash has compromised governance but i dont think the core contracts are broken so you can use that too, just be careful when you deal with americans because its illegal there.

kinda ironic that bitcoin is designed to be as trustless as possible but you need to trust third parties with you money a lot of the time because the core protocol is too simple for its own good.

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