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Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

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Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#661

Post by jcgl »

getcrunk wrote: post #56

systemd solved/improved a bunch of things for linux, but now the plan seems to be to replace package management with image based whole dist a/b swaps. and to have signed unified kernel images. this basically will remove or significantly encumber user control over their system, such that any modification will make you loose your "signed" status and ... boom! goodbye accessing the internet without an id pottering recen…

Immutable, signed systems do not intrinsically conflict with hackability. See this blog post of Lennart's[0] and systemd's ParticleOS meta-distro[1].

I do agree that these technologies can be abused. But system integrity is also a prerequisite for security; it's not like this is like Digital "Rights" Management, where it's unequivocally a bad thing that only advances evil interests. Like, Widevine should never have been made a thing in Firefox imo.

So I think what's most productive here is to build immutable, signable systems that can preserve user freedom, and then use social and political means to further guarantee those freedoms. For instance a requirement that owning a device means being able to provision your own keys. Bans on certain attestation schemes. Etc. (I empathize with anyone who would be cynical about those particular possibilities though.)

[0] https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html

[1] https://github.com/systemd/particleos

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#662

Post by jcgl »

charcircuit wrote: post #594
trelane wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all. The ones that ship Linux preinstalled and with support don't.

I hope you are mistaken. It's embarrassing how far behind in security the desktop Linux ecosystem is.

Agreed in general. But regarding secure boot, it's not like shim actually helps with real security either afaiu, right?

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#663

Post by pamcake »

prima-facie wrote: post #635
thewebguyd wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggested this as a possible solution in another HN thread a while back, but along the lines of "If a bank wants me to have a secure, locked down terminal to do business with them, then they should be the ones forking it over, not commanding control of my owned personal device." It would quickly get out of hand if every online service started to do the same though. But, if remote device attestation continues to be…

I was hoping banks would turn to using Yubikeys/U2F for authentication/transaction signing, and not these Draconian measures.

I remember my parents doing online banking authenticating with smart cards. Over 20 years ago. Today the same bank requires an iOS or Play Integrity device (for individuals at least. Their gated business banking are separate services and idk what they offer there).

This is not a question of missing tech.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#664

Post by plagiarist »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #642
plagiarist wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I have nsresourced work in a regular systemd service or quadlet so that I can have an ephemeral user run a container? I am trying to find information and just seeing it as part of nsspawn, that seems to require a container specifically built around a root filesystem. I am not going to struggle with systemd if I have to build containers specifically for it. If I have to rearrange everything I am doing I would j…

nspawn containers aren't really any different to regular system images/archives other than they don't need a kernel. I don't think the setting is exposed to regular service units (it might be able to in the future, I don't know) and I don't think podman has any integration with it. What kinda service do you have where you need a full range of UIDs?

I don't need a full range. I would just like to run podman under a non-root user using regular system services. Especially where a persistent volume or bind mount is involved.

Let's say Home Assistant. It would be nice to have a have some system user "homeassistant" with no home directory that owns the process and owns its /var/whereever/config.conf . It would be nice to have the isolation on host in addition to the isolation via container. But I don't want to be rebuilding any containers to get that, unless I am misunderstanding something on nsresourced.

I'd be really pleased with that setup. MQTT could be its own system user. And HA could depend on MQTT so I have nice startup behavior. Etc.

IDK how to have system users like this run a container without the subuid range. Even when I create the users with ranges in the file, there seems to be problems with informing systemd (as a non-root user) that the running process is different from the one it started.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#665

Post by jcgl »

direwolf20 wrote: post #242
egypturnash wrote: post #110

"We are building cryptographically verifiable integrity into Linux systems. Every system starts in a verified state and stays trusted over time." What does this mean? Why would anyone want this? Can you explain this to me like I'm five years old?

Your computer will come with a signed operating system. If you modify the operating system, your computer will not boot. If you try to install a different operating system, your computer will not boot.

> If you try to install a different operating system, your computer will not boot.

That does not follow. That would only very specifically happen when all of these are true:

1. Secure Boot cannot be disabled

2. You cannot provision your own Secure Boot keys

3. Your desired operating system is not signed by the computer's trusted Secure Boot keys

"Starting in a verified state and stay[ing] trusted over time" sounds more like using measured boot. Which is basically its own thing and most certainly does not preclude booting whatever OS you choose.

Although if your comment was meant in a cynical way rather than approaching things technically, than I don't think my reply helps much.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#666

Post by WD-42 »

ingohelpinger wrote: post #650
mkeeter wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh hi ChatGPT The giveaway is that LLMs love bulleted lists with a bolded attention-grabbing phrase to start each line. Copy-pasting directly to HN has stripped the bold formatting and bullets from the list, so the attention-grabbing phrase is fused into the next sentence, e.g. “Potential for abuse Attestation enables blacklisting”

Calling this a "giveaway" is kind of hilarious. LLMs use bulleted lists because humans have always used bulleted lists—in RFCs, design docs, and literally every tech write-up ever. Structure didn't suddenly become artificial in 2023. lol.

Yea but humans would have fixed it, this person didn't even bother. Straight copy and paste.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#667

Post by trelane »

charcircuit wrote: post #594
trelane wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all. The ones that ship Linux preinstalled and with support don't.

I hope you are mistaken. It's embarrassing how far behind in security the desktop Linux ecosystem is.

They have a TPM that you can enable and add your own keys if you want to.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#668

Post by cbarrick »

curt15 wrote: post #659
cbarrick wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [T]he war on general computing and computer ownership [...] It is exhausting to see the hatred some have for people just owning their hardware. The integrity of a system being verified/verifiable doesn't imply that the owner of the system doesn't get to control it. This sort of e2e attestation seems really useful for enterprise or public infrastructure. Like, it'd be great to know that the ATMs or transit systems i…

> At the end of the day, as long as the owner of the hardware gets to control the keys, this seems like fantastic tech. The problem is that there are powerful corporate and government interests who would love nothing more than to prevent users from controlling the keys for their own computers, and they can make their dream come true simply by passing a law. It may be the case that certain users want to ensure that th…

That's like saying we shouldn't build anything that can be used for good if it can also be used for evil.

By that logic, we should just turn off the internet. Too much potential for evil there.

More seriously, the argument being presented seems to just be "attestation tech has been used for evil in the past, therefore all attestation tech is bad," which is obviously an unsound argument. A sound argument would have to show that attestation tech is _inherently_ bad, and I've already provided examples that I think effectively counter that. I can provide more if needed.

I get that we want to prevent attestation tech from being used for evil, but that's a regulatory problem, not a technical one. You make this point by framing the evil parties as "corporate and government interests."

Don't get me wrong, I am fully against anything that limits the freedoms of the person that owns the device. I just don't see how any of this is a valid argument that Amutable's mission is bad/immoral/invalid.

Or maybe another argument that's perhaps more aligned with the FOSS ideology: if I want e2e attestation of the software stack on my own devices, isn't this a good thing for me?

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#669

Post by mariusor »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #609
mariusor wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that attestation doesn't really provide any real security? Not even from the bank's point of view?

If the user's device isn't compromised then everything is fine regardless of whether or not it can pass attestation. If the user's device is compromised, the device doesn't need to pass attestation to run a fake bank app and steal the user's credentials. Once the attacker has the user's credentials they can use them to transfer money regardless of whether or not they have to use a different device that can pass attes…

So do we just give up because it's too hard?

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#670

Post by tzs »

thewebguyd wrote: post #571
bee_rider wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do sort of wonder if there’s room in my life for a small attested device. Like, I could actually see a little room for my bank to say “we don’t know what other programs are running on your device so we can’t actually take full responsibility for transactions that take place originated from your device,” and if I look at it from the bank’s point of view that doesn’t seem unreasonable. Of course, we’ll see if anybody…

I suggested this as a possible solution in another HN thread a while back, but along the lines of "If a bank wants me to have a secure, locked down terminal to do business with them, then they should be the ones forking it over, not commanding control of my owned personal device." It would quickly get out of hand if every online service started to do the same though. But, if remote device attestation continues to be…

> I suggested this as a possible solution in another HN thread a while back, but along the lines of "If a bank wants me to have a secure, locked down terminal to do business with them, then they should be the ones forking it over, not commanding control of my owned personal device."

Most banks already do that. The secure, locked down terminals are called ATMs and they are generally placed at assorted convenient locations in most cities.

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