Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 469 posts

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

#41

Post by jl6 »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #19
jl6 wrote: post #11

I don’t have ultimate trust in any software or hardware, but I get to “good enough” by deciding which providers I trust: * Software: Canonical, Google, Microsoft, Valve, Oracle, Dropbox. I install software from their official repos and keep it up to date. Anything 3rd-party/unofficial/experimental/GitHub goes in a VM. * Hardware: I built my main PC from mainstream commodity components. I have no way of knowing if the…

What about publicly known backdoors in your hardware? https://www.techrepublic.com/article/is-the-intel-management... There is hardware that doesn't contain those at least, but it doesn't break power records.

I don't consider it practical to take any countermeasures to the possibility of this threat. I think there's a ~10% chance it's a backdoor, and if it is, there's a 98% chance it would be at the behest of a branch of the US government, and I'm not currently an adversary of theirs.

(This is not an argument for mass surveillance, it's just a practical assessment of the risk).

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

#42

Post by BLKNSLVR »

Silhouette wrote: post #35
gnfargbl wrote: post #9

Here'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 s…

Would be interested in hearing other things that HN'ers do to limit risk. Mostly the same basics as you. The document you linked is a good starting point. I'd add extensive use of virtualisation and sandboxing. I run less and less software as native, installed applications on any device I use personally or professionally. Instead it tends to run inside things like VMs or Docker containers or cloud-hosted platforms no…

100% with you on the entirety of your last paragraph.

I generally use a device as an access mechanism; a configured window into the data. This configuration is the only thing lost when a device is lost. No data, no function, no service. Configure the replacement device and continue as you were.

Virtualisation and Docker-isation makes backups and restores almost enjoyable.

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

#43

Post by paulcole »

greggyb wrote: post #21
amelius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you lock your computer every time you leave your desk? And do you always check for keylogger thumbdrives and such?

Yes. Why wouldn't you?

Because you assess the risk as being low and don’t care that much about low risk things.

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

#45

Post by mr90210 »

amelius wrote: post #20
gnfargbl wrote: post #9

Here'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 s…

Do you lock your computer every time you leave your desk? And do you always check for keylogger thumbdrives and such?

When I worked at an office, I used to, with a quick: CMD+CTRL+Q

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

#46

Post by sweetjuly »

I run the latest betas of macOS and iOS which means I get exploit breaking changes as soon as possible. I keep all the security mitigations on my mac enabled (SIP, secure boot, etc.) which helps makes a variety of exploit flows and persistent compromise difficult.

But random malicious code in user space? Well, I really just hope for the best :)

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

#47

Post by alkonaut »

I don’t. Not sure why I’d do that. I find the risk acceptably low that it is. But more importantly, I don’t have any reason to fear that it is.

So I trust that regular caution and OS security reduces the risk to an acceptable level but mostly I don’t fear anyone reading or destroying my data because I have backups and it’s not sensitive. Sure it would be scary from an integrity perspective, but not in any other sense. Even constant access to my machine and everything I do wouldn’t be a big risk.

So if I’m affected by a ransom Trojan (most likely scenario), I’m happy to just wipe my machine.

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

#49

Post by fattybob »

Hmm, actually, my aging Mac always asks me to install something whenever I connect my newer iPhone - I don’t like that at all, it’s not at all what I’d expect from an apple device, but I always am coming to realise that apple devices really aren’t what they used to be - quite sad

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

#50

Post by saagarjha »

sweetjuly wrote: post #46

I run the latest betas of macOS and iOS which means I get exploit breaking changes as soon as possible. I keep all the security mitigations on my mac enabled (SIP, secure boot, etc.) which helps makes a variety of exploit flows and persistent compromise difficult. But random malicious code in user space? Well, I really just hope for the best :)

Note that betas sometimes fall behind public releases when it comes to security patches.
Post reply on HN