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It's not pure security theater, there are a few clear gains for those who care about such things: * Naive screencaps are much less traceable to the leaker than
by lolinder 1y ago
It's not pure security theater, there are a few clear gains for those who care about such things:
* Naive screencaps are much less traceable to the leaker than a naive photo is. Yes, someone can strip out EXIF data, but we've seen over and over again that they generally don't. And even without EXIF a naive framing on the photo is more likely to expose information about the location or identity of the person who took it.
* A photo of a webinar is going to (barring serious postprocessing) look much less official and be less legible than a screenshot, so the use cases for illicit captures are going to be fewer. Few people are going to try to take a phone photo of the top-secret meeting and use the slide in their next team all-hands, but many might forget the rules and than snap a screenshot really quickly for later use.
* Just having the ability to block the easy method of screen captures helps avoid cases where the person doing the capturing isn't actively malicious, just ill-informed. If a normal employee attempts a screenshot and is reminded they're not supposed to do that, they're not going to pull out their phone to take a photo, they're going to say "oops" and move on.
Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here, but most of corporate InfoSec is wrapped up in protecting against pretty lame threat models that would benefit from this—mostly uninformed/ignorant employees screwing up without intending to be a threat.
- cma 1y ago> Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here Like running windows in a VM or using an HDMI capture card. And are they going to break running teams meetings when using moonlight etc. with this? If you are OBS capturing during the meeting does it get blacked out or just breaks your recording?
- lolinder 1y agoYou don't need to elaborate on mechanisms for bypassing because you're already imagining a threat actor that is out of scope. This is primarily about blocking accidental leaks by regular employees who were asked to not record but ignored it. This kind of reuse of content happens all the time in companies of any significant size and isn't entirely stopped by simple requests or watermarks. This tool gives companies one more option to protect against this very lame and boring but also very real threat.
- preciousoo 1y agoAnd also gives legal teams more foundation to stand on, bypassing this isn't trivial so it shows real intent
- userbinator 1y ago"isn't trivial"? When the sibling comment mentions how a lot of employees will by default use a camera when asked for a screenshot?
- preciousoo 1y agoBy "isn't trivial", I mean that takes real effort on the user end to bypass (as they can't simply take screenshots in traditional methods). Bad choice of word on my end
- guappa 1y agoThey have absolutely no way to enforce anything of sorts on linux, technically.
- int_19h 1y agoA typical corporate workspace won't have any employees running Linux on their work machines.
- prmoustache 1y agoThat is not my experience in the last 10 years.
- crote 1y ago> This is primarily about blocking accidental leaks by regular employees who were asked to not record but ignored it. I think you're seriously overestimating regular employees. A significant number of people will send you smartphone pictures when you ask for a screenshot - why would they suddenly start looking into on-device screen capture when taking a picture or video of some random presentation?
- Aurornis 1y agoThe easiest one is already mentioned in the article: Someone pulling out their phone and snapping a photo. People know it’s not perfect. However, raising the bar discourages the spontaneous captures that people might try out of habit.
- casey2 1y ago[flagged]
- jay_kyburz 1y ago>A photo of a webinar is going to (barring serious postprocessing) look much less official I don't mean to pile on but, you wouldn't use post processing, you would just take the information out of your screenshots and make a new slide deck if you wanted pass it off as official.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoGood summary. It's best to think of controls like this as guardrails. They are mostly "safety" features rather than hard-core security features. They help honest people to avoid potentially dangerous mistakes.
- cwillu 1y agoGuardrails that break support for devices that aren't owned by the equipment manufacturer, yeah, about that…
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoIt doesn't do anything of the sort. It will work on PCs, Web, Android and iOS - everything with a supported client. Not sure what "support" you expect for unsupported clients.
- i-zu 1y agoWill it though? If I join from Linux using Ferdium or any other browser what will prevent me from using any screenshooter? Or will web be considered an unsupported platform?
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoThe article says web is supported. Whether that means all browsers or just some, no idea.
- cwillu 1y agoPerhaps a little less snark would be appropriate if you don't know what other people are talking about.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoApologies if I came across snarky, not my intention. It's definitely not true that this feature breaks support for devices not owned by the manufacturer. The follow on question about whether all possible web clients / operating systems would be supported, I don't know. The article just says that web is supported.
- bmicraft 1y agoWhat's the endgame here? Mandatory HDCP monitors for meetings? HDCP for absolutely every application?
- rsync 1y ago"Yes, someone can strip out EXIF data, but we've seen over and over again that they generally don't. And even without EXIF a naive framing on the photo is more likely to expose information about the location or identity of the person who took it." for f in `ls -1 /pics/IMG_*.jpg|/usr/bin/xargs basename` ; do /usr/local/bin/magick convert $f -strip -quality 8$rand -shave 1$randx1$rand2 -resize 9$rand2% -attenuate 1.0 +noise Uniform out_$f && /usr/local/bin/exiftool -overwrite_original -all= out_$f && rm -rf $f ; done So ... not just stripping the exif/meta data but also dropping the quality to 8[0-9]%, shaving a random number of pixels from the border, resizing by 9[0-9]% and adding some noise to the image. Perhaps someone will find this useful ...
- cyanydeez 1y agonot the people being referenced. You are the 1%.