devops99
The more recently released Trezor wallets are still new, and Yubikey 5C will probably be used in many places anyway just because of the keyring and no need for the usb-c cable.
Without secure boot (backed by TPM), I can boot a small USB device that has LEDs on it to indicate to me that the target system has been infected to send me a copy of the target's password, after I already imaged the disk (or when I have another team member steal it or take it by force later).
If there's a UEFI password to access UEFI settings, I can reset it in under 20 minutes with physical access. Some tamper-evident tape on the laptop casing may stop me if I haven't already had a resource intrude into the target's home/office to have some replacement tamper-evident sticker material ready. Very very few places, even some really smart ones, make use tamper-evident material. Glitter+glue tamper-evident seals are something I can't spoof though.
It's not that hard to get into a hotel room. Often enough if a business books a hotel for you it's because they want access to your laptop while you're at lunch with another employee who so kindly suggests to leave your backpack in the hotel room.
disclaimer: all above is fictional and for educational and entertainment purposes only
Because TPM sniffers are now at a material cost of about $15 and can be acquired for a price at under $200, more than a TPM is needed for data encryption, especially for users like a CEO. This is why a firm I used to work for encrypted the key that could unlock user data with both TPM plus Yubikey.
This should be prohibited by commercial law.
Yeah, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, etc didn't have this, but as the saying goes: you get what you pay for. Although enough of the Gentoo users (the real Gentoo users) have such a thing had it around that time too, if they wanted it (and they tend to put together what they want).
Some essential context: if you think the "Linux community" is elitist, wait until you see the niche commercial (and higher) players. I'm probably an example of such, to be fair.
- a client (company I do contract work for) sees a different source address that is different than the source address I use for casual browsing+posting.
- two SaaS used for purposes of servicing agreement with "client" don't see the same source IP address as used for other clients.
- a bank I use, and PayPal, always sees the same source IP address dedicated to my VPN account only and for this purpose.
- the tunnel (VPN) provider I use for casual browsing+posting does not see the destination IP address of my client's VPN.
- whatever first-hop ISP I use sees one single Wireguard tunnel and nothing else ever.
- the first-hop Wireguard tunnel is paid for with a pre-paid debit card, but any outbound TOR traffic is encapsulated by a secondary tunnel paid for with crypto.
- the TOR circuit used for browsing purpose A is not also shared by browsing purpose B.
- any arbitrary outbound tunnel is specific to the container or VM I intended to use but doesn't carry, nor has any risk of carrying, any of my other traffic.
There is no crime within Common Law for any of the above. Nor is there any violation of any statute for which any of the above is, per doctrine of minimum contact (such as with a pre-paid debit card), within jurisdiction of statute.
Perhaps some users do operate with some concern of being "busted", but most users that do outbound network path management do not operate with this concern.
The "product" is already successful. Some spent effort, others spent money.
Those who did the latter include defense contractor or other government backgrounds, ""conservative"" (aka normal people) moms who were censored on Facebook and Twitter as early as 2019 and had enough pattern recognition to know the unlawful censorship reached all the way up into the federal government, journalists, and some are in the category of politician.
Think of what Tucker Carlson shared with the public "the NSA got into my Signal account, which I didn't know they could do". I don't expect our solution to stand up to NSA, but unlike a retail device the starting point of the digital playing field doesn't make it a cakewalk for them. They will have to work significantly harder to undermine what we have.
These categories of users have already experienced suffering abuse, or anticipate being abused, they are not going to "eventually move on" from "this computer I carry on my person every day isn't designed to fuck me over" and downgrade back to retail devices that are designed (in one way or another) to fuck them over.
Some of the "Instagram famous" gen Z stereotypical "hot girls" who are computer illiterate and generally aloof (vapid on the surface) were immediately willing to tolerate the overhead of "touchscreen cabled to a backpack" when they were told "when you do a call with mom or dad, that call does actually stay protected". Trashy aka "low socioeconomic status" people don't give a shit about family privacy/autonomy, these people do.
The technical concept is what I am allowed to post about so that's what I did. As I already wrote earlier (and also then later cited I had written), something cohesive will be posted later this year, and if the person I expect to do it doesn't I'll do it myself. Or, one of the other existing players in the space will, or someone else entirely (and I'd be perfectly happy with that).
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> You're not sitting on some super special idea here
I appreciate you acknowledging this point, a point that I had emphasized, and I feel I had done so rather clearly, several times above. Many Qubes users have been doing this since 2018.
The essential thing my camp did that was "special" was package it professionally in a way that "normie" users can succeed with it out-of-the-box.
Like with any specific operating system and hardware combination there are implementation specific bugs here and there, but nothing major.
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> how far I could get without a proper voice plan.
Some use "2FA mule", like this https://kozubik.com/items/2famule/ ; though we advise to physically remove the microphone of the 2FA mule and presume any WiFi/Bluetooth traffic from it is hostile.
Those who need PSTN (legacy phone network) voice or 911 can use another device for that.
No one using our mini-backpack is missing out on any functionality they actually need.
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> eg what specific dev boards straightforwardly run Graphene? I don't see any listed on the website
I do appreciate you bothering to look. I actually do. There are boards that can run with zero blobs, they are intended for production use as sold, so long as they can run a Linux kernel and have a GPU that Android can use, they can run GrapheneOS.
Our solution is not supported nor known about by the GrapheneOS project, we have our own branch and cicd and all that.
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> Which is probably how I ended up skipping over some actual details.
Yeah, the performance (or lack thereof) of your reading comprehension has noticeable.
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> the polar opposite of the trash elitist attitude you're pushing.
Okay but no matter what happens, I will always get more money and more pussy than you.
Qubes makes outbound network path management easy enough but it's not too hard to do on Linux and FreeBSD, so it can also be done on machines with modest compute resources (which may or may not be subject to the machine being an older machine) as well.
In more ancient history there was obsessive worship of the planets on every habitable continent. Today we have a more scientific explanation for what was happening then, even if we don't see the same spectacles today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland_currentThere is a very dire need to have those with hardware hacking skills assist the larger freedom software community in "liberating" newer machines.
Someone recently got Libreboot running on a ThinkPad T480
https://ezntek.com/posts/librebooting-the-thinkpad-t480-20241207t0933/And, hopefully your USB stack, or your phone's equivalent to SIM interface, doesn't have vulnerabilities that the small computer that is the SIM card could exploit.
Operating systems that center their efforts on protecting high risk users like Qubes dedicated a whole copy of Linux running in a Xen VM to interface with USB devices.
It'd be great if more information were available on how devices like Google's Pixel devices harden the interface for SIM cards.
Pay more taxes to change the weather. https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-telecom-exec-who-refused-nsa-snooping-is-out-of-prison-and-hes-talking/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_official)#Whistleblowing
https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5713_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201312301130_-_to_protect_and_infect_part_2_-_jacob
Did Facebook and Twitter do this when the federal government told them to censor?
What did Mike Benz' interview with Tucker (whether you dislike or like Tucker is neither here nor there so let's not get distracted by that) in February of this year (2024) reveal to all of us?
> of big tech to have any desire to do this kind of thing.
Apple is and always will be subservient to NSA, CIA, and the State Department. If you believe today -- after taking a moment to really, truly, seriously think about it -- that it is the other way around, you have a very special kind of stunted personal development.
> (including security engineering teams) within the company...
I respectfully implore you to look into the publicly available information about how many people at Facebook, Google, Twitter (pre-Musk), and Apple have NSA or other "glowie" backgrounds.
> well that seems like a recipe for getting some of the company's most talented and highly paid security engineers incredibly pissed off
You are correct here.
> if they ever find out
They won't, not unless they already have the appropriate clearance, and once they do they will take those secrets to the grave, or else -- unless they can make it to Moscow instead of a black site operated on foreign soil.
> and it's very likely they would eventually find out
Provided they can get into parts of buildings, buildings that aren't even on the same campus, that they aren't authorized to get into, which will never happen. So..
And, yes, I will continue to look down my nose at you as someone who is grossly inferior to me.
The message I posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42557398 is excessively detailed.
What we did was put de-blobbed GrapheneOS on a compute board, put secure boot on another compute board, punt the radio onto a separate compute board, add a battery, and manage it all with a management board in a small backpack, with a USB touchscreen for user interface.
Then we productized it for select groups of people.
But, it's really not that complicated. Like it's really not. Many people have built these kinds of things before.
If you want to try to tell me that mindslight has a "provable track record" talking about this field, I have a very very hard time believing something like that because -- and I'm being honest here -- as any reasonable person will also conclude: his responses he has posted here are really fuckin' stupid.
It's a shame that popularly used OEMs still allow "abrupt restart" to be so easy.