4 ms·

I always get the impression an immutable OS is solving the wrong problem. It protects the OS - all the data I don't care about - but does nothing to protect /h

by soneil 5y ago

I always get the impression an immutable OS is solving the wrong problem. It protects the OS - all the data I don't care about - but does nothing to protect /home/me, which is everything I do care about. How is this solved?

martinald 5y ago
Agreed entirely. It wouldn't even solve the attack described in the post; a malicious VSCode plugin (as that would be ran from your /home folder somewhere. It feels so many security ideas fail to protect the /home dir which contains 99% of important data that needs secured, and instead focus on the OS. I understand that for servers and hypervisors, but it feels like so little effort goes into desktop OS on this. Basically, desktop OSes need to become more like iOS and Android in how they ask for permissions and segregate apps from each other.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  macOS does _a little_ of that, although limited to certain "special" folders (Documents, Desktop, Downloads, ...) and people call it macOS Vista for it. Note: I like that it does that and would like this capability to be expanded and refined.
  - martinald 5y ago
    It's a start for sure but there is so much low hanging fruit here. Eg a warning/prompt if a program tries to read/modify/delete more than x files in your home directory (not including its own config files). This would stop an entire class of malware scanning for passwords or secrets in your home folder. It could even if implemented right stop some of the ransomware attacks after a few files. It seems crazy that so little effort is put into this kind of thing vs the crazy level of effort that goes into hardening the OS.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Prevention and detection of tampered files in /home/* is definitely a major aspect of 'Securing the workstation'; As attacks are not just for exfiltration of data and could very well be to place .murder_VIP.doc; There seems to be a need-gap[1] for solutions in this space. But considering immutable OS increases overall security of the system and that the system/software likely has to be compramised first to tamper /home/* I think they're useful to prevent this attack as well. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/188-proving-computer-hack-proof-cybersecurity https://needgap.com/problems/188-proving-computer-hack-proof... (Disclosure: I run this problem validation forum).
goodpoint 5y ago
Correct. Immutability does very little for security: attackers are interested in reading your files, extracting your authentication data e.g. session cookies and little else. What really helps is application sandboxing, e.g. with firejail.

by soneil 5y ago

martinald 5y ago

Agreed entirely. It wouldn't even solve the attack described in the post; a malicious VSCode plugin (as that would be ran from your /home folder somewhere. It feels so many security ideas fail to protect the /home dir which contains 99% of important data that needs secured, and instead focus on the OS. I understand that for servers and hypervisors, but it feels like so little effort goes into desktop OS on this. Basically, desktop OSes need to become more like iOS and Android in how they ask for permissions and segregate apps from each other.

cassianoleal 5y ago
macOS does _a little_ of that, although limited to certain "special" folders (Documents, Desktop, Downloads, ...) and people call it macOS Vista for it. Note: I like that it does that and would like this capability to be expanded and refined.
- martinald 5y ago
  It's a start for sure but there is so much low hanging fruit here. Eg a warning/prompt if a program tries to read/modify/delete more than x files in your home directory (not including its own config files). This would stop an entire class of malware scanning for passwords or secrets in your home folder. It could even if implemented right stop some of the ransomware attacks after a few files. It seems crazy that so little effort is put into this kind of thing vs the crazy level of effort that goes into hardening the OS.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

Prevention and detection of tampered files in /home/* is definitely a major aspect of 'Securing the workstation'; As attacks are not just for exfiltration of data and could very well be to place .murder_VIP.doc; There seems to be a need-gap[1] for solutions in this space. But considering immutable OS increases overall security of the system and that the system/software likely has to be compramised first to tamper /home/* I think they're useful to prevent this attack as well. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/188-proving-computer-hack-proof-cybersecurity https://needgap.com/problems/188-proving-computer-hack-proof... (Disclosure: I run this problem validation forum).

goodpoint 5y ago

Correct. Immutability does very little for security: attackers are interested in reading your files, extracting your authentication data e.g. session cookies and little else. What really helps is application sandboxing, e.g. with firejail.