I’m the Never Ending Pie Throwing Robot, aka NEPTR.

Linux enthusiast, programmer, and privacy advocate. I’m nearly done with an IT Security degree.

TL;DR I am a nerd.

  • 0 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 22 days ago
Cake day: November 20th, 2024
  • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Do you use Gnome or KDE Plasma?English
    1·
    4 days ago

    The weakest link of any secured system is the user. I know that will never change, especially as computers/software become more complicated over time. But I don’t understand why many people argue that “since the user is the weakest link, we don’t need more secure systems, we need better users.” We need both.

    Explaination

    For anyone who suggests that a user can “just be smarter and not install malware” think about this: do you check read all the commits to the software you install, for each update, and then compile from source. The answers is no. And I don’t think we should need to.

    Linux is not secure, it is still meant for tinkerers and by design is very open. This is one of my favorite aspects of Linux, just how open it is. The result though is an insecure system with many attack vectors that are hard to protect against.

    For example, I recently wanted to patch a game for mod support. This required me to run a script that i didnt fully understand. I did my best to read it and nothing looked suspicious, but I couldn’t fully understand because I am not a modder for that game.

    This script could have done a number of things:

    • Added a fake sudo script to the path in the user’s home resulting in privilege escalation.
    • Created a user Systemd service that logs everything added to the clipboard or keylog, since that is also possible on Wayland with an LD_PRELOAD attack.
    • Create a Systemd service that records the screen to grab passwords.
    • Edit the user’s .bashrc file.
    • Delete/encrypt every file owned by the user.
    • Read and exfiltrate all app data from the $HOME
    • Or a combination of multiple other things.

    The solution is sandboxing, permission system, secure defaults, and transparency to the user. And of course a way to disable security checks for tinkerers.

    My point is that the perfect user does not exist. We (inevitably) use our computers to do all sorts of niche things, the perfect user does not even turn their PC on.

  • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Do you use Gnome or KDE Plasma?English
    63·
    4 days ago

    I would agree but it still heavily relies/requires X11 for many of the core components and apps. Wayland support on the horizon. For now though I wouldn’t recommend anyone use any DE that doesnt support Wayland, since X.Org is has been unmaintained for many years, it is a bloated protocol, and is insecure by design. This is because it was designed 40+ years ago in a time before security was a big concern to developers.

  • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•What are the problems with Ubuntu?English
    291·
    5 days ago

    Canonical, the owners of Ubuntu, love to steal open source projects. They’ll help a project with development power, then force the contributors to sign a CLA (for an example see the fork of LXD called Incus). Canonical also uses and forces proprietary systems onto the user’s, e.g. Snap uses the proprietary and hardcoded Canonical repository, which Ubuntu now defaults to using Snap for installing packages.

    Side note, if it wasnt for Snap using a proprietary backend and also depending on AppArmor (generally regarded as a weaker MAC than SELinux), I would prefer Snap over Flatpak. It creates a better sandbox (aka the actually Security of the software), avoids sandbox escapes, blacklists against broad permissions (e.g. $HOME access), and Snap packages generally have stricter permissions (which determines the real-world security of Snap). Sandboxing is very important for Desktop (and server) security. Android is does the best job of this, but it would be nice if projects like Sydbox, Crablock, or Bubblejail were adopted and built-in to the package manager.

    But even without any of the previously mentioned problems, I just think Fedora is a better OS. Fedora comes preconfigured with SELinux policies to confine system services they are quicker to adopt new technologies. Fedora is also a semi-rolling distro, meaning packages are quicker to get updated than on Ubuntu. Fedora stays FOSS, where as Ubuntu becomes more locked down. Also, the package Brace made by the developer of DivestOS is great for quickly hardening a Fedora system.