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> my iPhone is more secure than linux for the same reason The phrase "more secure" doesn't mean anything, I wish it wasn't used. One needs to talk about the t

by jjav 4y ago

> my iPhone is more secure than linux for the same reason The phrase "more secure" doesn't mean anything, I wish it wasn't used. One needs to talk about the threat model(s) you care about and how a particular solution addresses them (or not). Any given solution can be both more secure and less secure than an alternative, depending on what threat models you care about. Which may well be different than the threat models someone else cares about. If you unconditionally trust Apple and all government agencies which have power over Apple (e.g. NSLs) then one could say iOS has a more secure file access model than Linux. But that's a big if. Personally I could never trust a closed source proprietary solution.

josephg 4y ago
> The phrase "more secure" doesn't mean anything Fair point. I'll elaborate: The linux (UNIX) security model is designed to protect users from other (potentially malicious) users on the same computer. The system as a whole is designed such that a malicious (or incompetent) user can't make the system as a whole stop working. The system is more important than any particular users' data. Software is assumed to be correct. Any program a user runs inherits the full permissions of that user. There's some problems: 1. Computers aren't often shared between mutually-untrusted people. 2. My data is much more precious than my computer itself. 3. Malicious software is everywhere. Every time I install a package some stranger wrote on npm or Cargo, I implicitly give it full access to all my data and my entire network. So, linux protects me from things I don't need protections from (other users) and doesn't protect me from things I do need protection from (malicious code). > One needs to talk about the threat model(s) you care about and how a particular solution addresses them (or not). The threat model for malicious code is, I install an apt package / cargo crate / npm package / intellij or vscode extension and the package contains code which either exfiltrates my data over the internet, or cryptolockers it. iOS (and Android?) don't let code like this run, since software can only (by default) access the data that it itself has created. Ransomware attacks are trivial on linux and impossible on iOS. Its much more likely that me or my family suffers from a keylogger or ransomware attack than we suffer as a result of government intrusion into our digital lives. I'm one bad npm install away from having all my data stolen, and it terrifies me.
- cpuguy83 4y ago
  Linux has lots of protective measures outside of just user isolation. There's capabilities, namespaces, cgroups, seccomp, landlock, selinux, apparmor. The difference is Linux gives the owner of the machine (for better or worse) decide what to do here. There are distros that try to force you into a more secure posture (Qubes), though.
  - lll-o-lll 4y ago
    This is interesting to me. Do you know if Windows OS provides similar features? The ideal for corporate environments (outside of dev) would be desktops that operate in the same way as iOS.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      In theory, yes. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-sandbox/windows-sandbox-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr... The practical application of this is a different story. But there is a problem with trying to compare this to things like iOS and phones. Phones are strongly application based, it is completely common to have your data locked up in an app and getting to another app has varying levels of difficulty. In Windows it is much more common for data to be file based, and applications can be launched and ran by clicking the file. File security is based on the user, so typically any application can access files owned by the same user. A huge portion of workflows would break if this were not the case.
- lmm 4y ago
  > Its much more likely that me or my family suffers from a keylogger or ransomware attack than we suffer as a result of government intrusion into our digital lives. Are you sure? How would you know? We can't know how many people the government blackmails with data taken from their iphones, because it's illegal to publish information about them doing so, whereas ransomware attacks are widely publicised.
  - 4y ago

by jjav 4y ago

josephg 4y ago

> The phrase "more secure" doesn't mean anything Fair point. I'll elaborate: The linux (UNIX) security model is designed to protect users from other (potentially malicious) users on the same computer. The system as a whole is designed such that a malicious (or incompetent) user can't make the system as a whole stop working. The system is more important than any particular users' data. Software is assumed to be correct. Any program a user runs inherits the full permissions of that user. There's some problems: 1. Computers aren't often shared between mutually-untrusted people. 2. My data is much more precious than my computer itself. 3. Malicious software is everywhere. Every time I install a package some stranger wrote on npm or Cargo, I implicitly give it full access to all my data and my entire network. So, linux protects me from things I don't need protections from (other users) and doesn't protect me from things I do need protection from (malicious code). > One needs to talk about the threat model(s) you care about and how a particular solution addresses them (or not). The threat model for malicious code is, I install an apt package / cargo crate / npm package / intellij or vscode extension and the package contains code which either exfiltrates my data over the internet, or cryptolockers it. iOS (and Android?) don't let code like this run, since software can only (by default) access the data that it itself has created. Ransomware attacks are trivial on linux and impossible on iOS. Its much more likely that me or my family suffers from a keylogger or ransomware attack than we suffer as a result of government intrusion into our digital lives. I'm one bad npm install away from having all my data stolen, and it terrifies me.

cpuguy83 4y ago
Linux has lots of protective measures outside of just user isolation. There's capabilities, namespaces, cgroups, seccomp, landlock, selinux, apparmor. The difference is Linux gives the owner of the machine (for better or worse) decide what to do here. There are distros that try to force you into a more secure posture (Qubes), though.
- lll-o-lll 4y ago
  This is interesting to me. Do you know if Windows OS provides similar features? The ideal for corporate environments (outside of dev) would be desktops that operate in the same way as iOS.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    In theory, yes. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-sandbox/windows-sandbox-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr... The practical application of this is a different story. But there is a problem with trying to compare this to things like iOS and phones. Phones are strongly application based, it is completely common to have your data locked up in an app and getting to another app has varying levels of difficulty. In Windows it is much more common for data to be file based, and applications can be launched and ran by clicking the file. File security is based on the user, so typically any application can access files owned by the same user. A huge portion of workflows would break if this were not the case.
lmm 4y ago
> Its much more likely that me or my family suffers from a keylogger or ransomware attack than we suffer as a result of government intrusion into our digital lives. Are you sure? How would you know? We can't know how many people the government blackmails with data taken from their iphones, because it's illegal to publish information about them doing so, whereas ransomware attacks are widely publicised.
- 4y ago