Re:NSO Group's iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rig...
by walrus01 on Thursday August 25, 2016 @06:10PM
(#12362886)
If you're being targeted by a nation state you will face all sorts of things to deal with that can't be handled by buying a Thinkpad with cash from a randomly chosen used computer store. Like bugging your residence and office, bugging your car, putting advanced GPS tracking devices on your car, rubber hose cryptography, hardware keystroke loggers inserted in your equipment while you're known to be away from your home or office, full disk copies of your laptop/desktop being taken (clonezille-type) by breaking into your office while you're away, all sorts of shit.
Re:NSO Group's iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rig...
by thingexplainer on Thursday August 25, 2016 @06:12PM
(#12362897)
If you don't keep your airgapped laptop on your person or in a tamper evident container at all times, it isn't an airgapped laptop. And if it isn't an airgapped laptop, it shouldn't know any secrets.
Re:NSO Group's iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rig...
by walrus01 on Thursday August 25, 2016 @06:15PM
(#12362917)
At which point if you're a UAE dissident and trying to deal with all this while living in the territory of the UAE, you might say "fuck it" and find a way to move to Toronto.
replace "UAE" with "Ethiopia" or any other authoritarian regime.
I'm afraid people are just as foolable and code just as executable on Debian as on any other platform. Additionally, vulnerabilities on Android are likely exploitable on Debian.
You will not survive an attack from a state adversary because you used Qubes, or OpenBSD, and certainly not TAILS (which is not particularly secure, just well integrated with Tor). You will survive because you are familiar with your tools of choice and you know how to secure them.
As a final note, if you're being targeted by a nation state, getting an pre-owned ThinkPad will probably result in getting a pre-0wn3d ThinkPad.