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I think we've reached a point where it's safe to say that if you're using a service - _,any_ service - assume your data is breached (or willingly given) and acc

I think we've reached a point where it's safe to say that if you're using a service - _,any_ service - assume your data is breached (or willingly given) and accessible to some unknown third party. That third party can be the government, it can be some random marketer or it can be a malicious hacker. Just hope that you have nothing anywhere that may be of interest or value to anyone, anywhere. Good luck.

kuzimoto 7y ago
I've made it a point to start self hosting anything that's particularly sensitive that I don't want third parties to have access to. KeePass and SyncThing probably have my most important information, and it's all owned by me.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  I think this belief that personally run software is more secure than professionally run software is a bit optimistic.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    It doesn't have to be more secure, it just has to be less likely to get hacked.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      Less likely to have targeted attacks but you are still at risk of someone finding an exploit in the software and sending a bot to scan the internet for the software
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        Sure. Nobody claimed you could get the risk down to zero.
        baroffoos 7y ago
        Its even more of a risk potentially because big companies have people full time working on keeping systems up to date and monitored. How many self hosters have a full monitoring system powerful enough to detect attacks and keep their software up to date and secured as soon as updates come out? How many people self hosting are even qualified to run a secure system? I bet most of them are just regular devs who know just enough about linux to get something online.
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        I don't think you understood my point. Yes, one particular risk might be higher. But you don't need to do security better or even on par with a big company. You just need your total risk of data exposure to be lower. You can bet big companies have lots of hackers trying to break into them with the newest 0-days, spearphish their employees, etc... there are so many threats you practically don't face if you're self-hosting.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Its even more of a risk potentially because big companies have people full time working on keeping systems up to date and monitored. Beyond the thing about different types and frequency of attacks - sure, I trust Google's security more than my own. But I do trust my own security more than that of Random-Startup.IO, who likely have no full-time security people, and little incentive to get the job right (paying attention to security slows down your incredible journey). Also, even with big companies, this argument applies primarily to the few like Google, Facebook or Apple. Your Random Megacorp from outside tech community usually focuses its security efforts on satisfying regulators and neutering their own employees, who'd otherwise happily copy out all sensitive data to make their jobs easier.
      - Hackbraten 7y ago
        I thought this kind of attack was usually done with relatively old bugs, for which patches are often available. If you sat on a fresh exploit, would you really waste it with automated, untargeted mass scans, which may draw a lot of attention, causing your bug to burn out quickly?
        CydeWeys 7y ago
        Um, yes? You'd use it as widely and as quickly as possible, ideally compromising every single vulnerable host on the entire Internet before any sort of coordinated response can be mounted. You see these kinds of attacks frequently with cryptolocking/cryptojacking software. The more quickly you deploy an attack targeting a new vulnerability, the more victims you'll have.
      - solidasparagus 7y ago
        Probably more at risk too because how rigorous are you really about staying up to date on the most recent security patches? How much time and money did you actually spend setting up security infrastructure like automated security testing or vulnerability bounties? Enterprises, even many of the ones that have had data breaches, dump a ton of time and money into those areas.
    - rcfox 7y ago
      I'm not sure that off-the-shelf software on your own server is necessarily less likely to get hacked. It's easy to fall behind on security updates when you don't think about deploys regularly. Look at the logs for your existing infrastructure. I can pretty much guarantee that there are drive-by Wordpress attacks, regardless of what software is actually serving requests. There will be ssh login attempts.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        You're not showing anything by telling me to look for attempted attacks. I realize they will be there, I don't even need to check. But if attack attempts are how you measure risk then I'd bet you whatever attack you can think of, Google et al. will have orders of magnitude more of them than I would. You gotta realize, it's not like I'm arguing you should set up a server with 1234 as the root password. I'm assuming you're reasonably competent in security, just mostly lacking in the bandwidth needed to e.g. keep your server constantly checked and updated on a daily/weekly basis. With those assumptions I have no reason to think the slightly increased risk of getting hit by a brand-new attack through an IP scan or something is going to outweigh all the entire classes of risks that you do away with as a result of not being part of a massive corporate attack target. Although, heck, if you're absolutely paranoid about random IP scans, you could just move your stuff to some obscure port, which I'm sure you realize already. There you go, you're not going to be found through random mass scans anymore.
- rhamzeh 7y ago
  I hear you. But I worry that that's not enough. I trust Syncthing and the (many) Keepass (X/C)++ developers, but how hard really would it be to slip something in unnoticed. All it requires is some minuscule bug somewhere. It doesn't need to be in the software itself! It can be in the compiler, or in the crypto or in the machine running it. If the OpenSSL debacle taught us, open source and the fact that many people can look at the code does not mean it's actually being looked at. Don't get me wrong, still loads better than non-open source, but you're still face a huge risk. I'm slightly competent as a developer (not that much, just enough to barely get by) and still looking at the code base of the many apps, services and platforms I use, I'm astounded by the fact that I have no clue how they actually work, and if there is any obvious attack vector there. MOST people have even less of an understanding of all these than I do.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    What kind of a KeePass bug would compromise your passwords by itself though? Are you imagining instead of saving your passwords it'd "accidentally" upload them to sketchyserver.com?
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    > All it requires is some minuscule bug somewhere You can say the exact same thing for any proprietary software or web service. The point of self-hosting is reducing the attack surface and probability of an attack.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Plus, both are great software. KeePass2Android is the best Android password manager, bar none.
  - rhamzeh 7y ago
    * KeePass2Android Offline :)
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Why offline? (And how do you sync?)
      - rhamzeh 7y ago
        I feel it's slightly better to rely on something else for the syncing (even better if you do it manually). I just feel like a password safe would have a draw immense interest from bad actors, so you marginally decrease your chances by using something else for syncing. That way if password storage code was compromised somehow, it can't do much. Then again, a password storage solution is probably investing so much more into security that it may be actually better than using something else..
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        What kinds of threats are you imagining though? KeePass2Android doesn't e.g. open any listening ports does it (I haven't checked)? (Not that NAT would make it easy to connect to it if it did anyway?) Are you imagining it would "accidentally" open a port? And you don't browse the web on it or otherwise run untrusted code on it. How are you imagining it would possibly get hacked? If it's connecting to e.g. Google Drive, then Google Drive or your DNS would need to get hacked somehow, and I'd hope it's checking certificates to prevent that (shouldn't be hard to verify this if this is your concern). If it's via Syncthing, your Syncthing would need to get hacked. In both cases your database would be hacked in which case you'd have the same issue with the offline version too... OTOH you're losing entry-level syncing which is quite the inconvenience...
      - 7y ago
- jammygit 7y ago
  The biggest thing stopping me is the worry I might misconfigure something after making some change in 6 months when I’m busy.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Make sure to keep the amount of selfhosted services to a minimum and as simple as possible to use and maintain. The simpler and smaller the surface of attack is, the better.
  - kuzimoto 7y ago
    That could always be an issue. Though I try to make sure I have the minimum number of ports, and services running. But there is a possibility that something I have is exploitable still.
- closeparen 7y ago
  StackOverflow is a forum, not a password manager or a file storage service. If people only participate in forums they self-host, each will have a community of one.
  - rglullis 7y ago
    The IndieWeb people would like to have a word with you...
keyle 7y ago
That's my basic assumption now. Which is why any website force-asking me for my date of birth or phone number will get a fake one, and I will use Paypal over giving my physical address. But it doesn't matter, the damage has been done over and over. Pretty sure I'm in many leaked database already (Hi Adobe!)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Reedx 7y ago
Just imagine a Gmail or Mint breach. Oy.
- mey 7y ago
  Quickbooks Online would also be horrific
  - dboreham 7y ago
    Which is why nobody should use Quickbooks Online.
- kerng 7y ago
  I think a mature state of mind is that you should assume those systems are compromised.
- desdiv 7y ago
  Before 2013, data sent between Google data-centers were in plaintext (!!!) because Google incorrectly assumed that the their private fiber network was actually private[0]. So if you used Gmail or communicated with people who used Gmail before 2013, then a copy of your communications are backuped up in Utah[1] right now. [0] https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-hacked-yahoo-google-cables https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-hacked-yahoo-google-cables [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
maccam912 7y ago
Someone make a service that I can submit my email and you'll generate tons of fake passwords for me, then "accidentally" leak them all. When my email and password make their way into the big password lists I want to dilute the real one with thousands of fake ones. If it became the norm that password lists are suddenly full of junk the demand for them would proboably evaporate.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Interesting, but the result will be that they're going to blast all of those passwords at the login of whatever service you're trying to protect by this trick. That could DOS the service. It also could result in them locking your account, if they're awake at all.
  - ggg2 7y ago
    if someone get enough passwords to DoS the service or force you to do a password reset, that's actually a pretty good safety fallback.

kuzimoto 7y ago

I've made it a point to start self hosting anything that's particularly sensitive that I don't want third parties to have access to. KeePass and SyncThing probably have my most important information, and it's all owned by me.

solidasparagus 7y ago
I think this belief that personally run software is more secure than professionally run software is a bit optimistic.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  It doesn't have to be more secure, it just has to be less likely to get hacked.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    Less likely to have targeted attacks but you are still at risk of someone finding an exploit in the software and sending a bot to scan the internet for the software
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Sure. Nobody claimed you could get the risk down to zero.
      - baroffoos 7y ago
        Its even more of a risk potentially because big companies have people full time working on keeping systems up to date and monitored. How many self hosters have a full monitoring system powerful enough to detect attacks and keep their software up to date and secured as soon as updates come out? How many people self hosting are even qualified to run a secure system? I bet most of them are just regular devs who know just enough about linux to get something online.
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        I don't think you understood my point. Yes, one particular risk might be higher. But you don't need to do security better or even on par with a big company. You just need your total risk of data exposure to be lower. You can bet big companies have lots of hackers trying to break into them with the newest 0-days, spearphish their employees, etc... there are so many threats you practically don't face if you're self-hosting.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Its even more of a risk potentially because big companies have people full time working on keeping systems up to date and monitored. Beyond the thing about different types and frequency of attacks - sure, I trust Google's security more than my own. But I do trust my own security more than that of Random-Startup.IO, who likely have no full-time security people, and little incentive to get the job right (paying attention to security slows down your incredible journey). Also, even with big companies, this argument applies primarily to the few like Google, Facebook or Apple. Your Random Megacorp from outside tech community usually focuses its security efforts on satisfying regulators and neutering their own employees, who'd otherwise happily copy out all sensitive data to make their jobs easier.
    - Hackbraten 7y ago
      I thought this kind of attack was usually done with relatively old bugs, for which patches are often available. If you sat on a fresh exploit, would you really waste it with automated, untargeted mass scans, which may draw a lot of attention, causing your bug to burn out quickly?
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        Um, yes? You'd use it as widely and as quickly as possible, ideally compromising every single vulnerable host on the entire Internet before any sort of coordinated response can be mounted. You see these kinds of attacks frequently with cryptolocking/cryptojacking software. The more quickly you deploy an attack targeting a new vulnerability, the more victims you'll have.
    - solidasparagus 7y ago
      Probably more at risk too because how rigorous are you really about staying up to date on the most recent security patches? How much time and money did you actually spend setting up security infrastructure like automated security testing or vulnerability bounties? Enterprises, even many of the ones that have had data breaches, dump a ton of time and money into those areas.
  - rcfox 7y ago
    I'm not sure that off-the-shelf software on your own server is necessarily less likely to get hacked. It's easy to fall behind on security updates when you don't think about deploys regularly. Look at the logs for your existing infrastructure. I can pretty much guarantee that there are drive-by Wordpress attacks, regardless of what software is actually serving requests. There will be ssh login attempts.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      You're not showing anything by telling me to look for attempted attacks. I realize they will be there, I don't even need to check. But if attack attempts are how you measure risk then I'd bet you whatever attack you can think of, Google et al. will have orders of magnitude more of them than I would. You gotta realize, it's not like I'm arguing you should set up a server with 1234 as the root password. I'm assuming you're reasonably competent in security, just mostly lacking in the bandwidth needed to e.g. keep your server constantly checked and updated on a daily/weekly basis. With those assumptions I have no reason to think the slightly increased risk of getting hit by a brand-new attack through an IP scan or something is going to outweigh all the entire classes of risks that you do away with as a result of not being part of a massive corporate attack target. Although, heck, if you're absolutely paranoid about random IP scans, you could just move your stuff to some obscure port, which I'm sure you realize already. There you go, you're not going to be found through random mass scans anymore.
rhamzeh 7y ago
I hear you. But I worry that that's not enough. I trust Syncthing and the (many) Keepass (X/C)++ developers, but how hard really would it be to slip something in unnoticed. All it requires is some minuscule bug somewhere. It doesn't need to be in the software itself! It can be in the compiler, or in the crypto or in the machine running it. If the OpenSSL debacle taught us, open source and the fact that many people can look at the code does not mean it's actually being looked at. Don't get me wrong, still loads better than non-open source, but you're still face a huge risk. I'm slightly competent as a developer (not that much, just enough to barely get by) and still looking at the code base of the many apps, services and platforms I use, I'm astounded by the fact that I have no clue how they actually work, and if there is any obvious attack vector there. MOST people have even less of an understanding of all these than I do.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  What kind of a KeePass bug would compromise your passwords by itself though? Are you imagining instead of saving your passwords it'd "accidentally" upload them to sketchyserver.com?
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > All it requires is some minuscule bug somewhere You can say the exact same thing for any proprietary software or web service. The point of self-hosting is reducing the attack surface and probability of an attack.
StavrosK 7y ago
Plus, both are great software. KeePass2Android is the best Android password manager, bar none.
- rhamzeh 7y ago
  * KeePass2Android Offline :)
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Why offline? (And how do you sync?)
    - rhamzeh 7y ago
      I feel it's slightly better to rely on something else for the syncing (even better if you do it manually). I just feel like a password safe would have a draw immense interest from bad actors, so you marginally decrease your chances by using something else for syncing. That way if password storage code was compromised somehow, it can't do much. Then again, a password storage solution is probably investing so much more into security that it may be actually better than using something else..
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        What kinds of threats are you imagining though? KeePass2Android doesn't e.g. open any listening ports does it (I haven't checked)? (Not that NAT would make it easy to connect to it if it did anyway?) Are you imagining it would "accidentally" open a port? And you don't browse the web on it or otherwise run untrusted code on it. How are you imagining it would possibly get hacked? If it's connecting to e.g. Google Drive, then Google Drive or your DNS would need to get hacked somehow, and I'd hope it's checking certificates to prevent that (shouldn't be hard to verify this if this is your concern). If it's via Syncthing, your Syncthing would need to get hacked. In both cases your database would be hacked in which case you'd have the same issue with the offline version too... OTOH you're losing entry-level syncing which is quite the inconvenience...
    - 7y ago
jammygit 7y ago
The biggest thing stopping me is the worry I might misconfigure something after making some change in 6 months when I’m busy.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Make sure to keep the amount of selfhosted services to a minimum and as simple as possible to use and maintain. The simpler and smaller the surface of attack is, the better.
- kuzimoto 7y ago
  That could always be an issue. Though I try to make sure I have the minimum number of ports, and services running. But there is a possibility that something I have is exploitable still.
closeparen 7y ago
StackOverflow is a forum, not a password manager or a file storage service. If people only participate in forums they self-host, each will have a community of one.
- rglullis 7y ago
  The IndieWeb people would like to have a word with you...

keyle 7y ago

That's my basic assumption now. Which is why any website force-asking me for my date of birth or phone number will get a fake one, and I will use Paypal over giving my physical address. But it doesn't matter, the damage has been done over and over. Pretty sure I'm in many leaked database already (Hi Adobe!)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Reedx 7y ago

Just imagine a Gmail or Mint breach. Oy.

mey 7y ago
Quickbooks Online would also be horrific
- dboreham 7y ago
  Which is why nobody should use Quickbooks Online.
kerng 7y ago
I think a mature state of mind is that you should assume those systems are compromised.
desdiv 7y ago
Before 2013, data sent between Google data-centers were in plaintext (!!!) because Google incorrectly assumed that the their private fiber network was actually private[0]. So if you used Gmail or communicated with people who used Gmail before 2013, then a copy of your communications are backuped up in Utah[1] right now. [0] https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-hacked-yahoo-google-cables https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-hacked-yahoo-google-cables [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

maccam912 7y ago

Someone make a service that I can submit my email and you'll generate tons of fake passwords for me, then "accidentally" leak them all. When my email and password make their way into the big password lists I want to dilute the real one with thousands of fake ones. If it became the norm that password lists are suddenly full of junk the demand for them would proboably evaporate.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Interesting, but the result will be that they're going to blast all of those passwords at the login of whatever service you're trying to protect by this trick. That could DOS the service. It also could result in them locking your account, if they're awake at all.
- ggg2 7y ago
  if someone get enough passwords to DoS the service or force you to do a password reset, that's actually a pretty good safety fallback.