gpg.fail

The PGP Problem

What’s the matter with PGP?

Well DHH is a Nazi fascist so he won’t be questioning anything.

Rethink DNS (on f-droid) offers the option to use WireGuard profiles from a your VPN provider if you supply it. Most providers allow that option.

Rethink allows disabling network access, firewalling, and DNS adblocking.

What are the minor security improvements?

Linux personalities already exist: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/personality.2.html

Here is the slopscore report

Nothing super crazy. Maybe they hide it well?

They do have “MA Localassistant” app which is LLM related. So maybe?

EDIT: I am like 90% sure it is slop coded. The style of the apps is weird looking, not fully consistent between apps, and the quality seems kinda low. Many apps have thin 1-2 pixel boarders that remind me of other LLM produced things.

Plus many of the apps have unnecessary Network permissions. And one app called MA Cast claims it doesn’t need internet access but has full Network permission anyways.

I found the Nym apps to not be stable enought for me to use. I don’t personally recommend. Also I couldn’t find any up-to-date audits on their website (only ones from 2-3 years ago).

I recommend this Lenspect on Linux. It uses VirusTotal API to scan files you select. It is available on Flathub with minimal permissions (basically just network permission to talk to VirusTotal).

Removed by mod

Flatpak does block userns. Apps on Android don’t get unprivileged user namespaces, and Chromium is at its strongest on Android. So I have to assume there is some way of making it secure inside an app sandbox.

He apologized IIRC. He has many other toxic beliefs, a quick web search will show that. It is good that he is no longer part of the greater linux community.

Really good video. Instant subscribe.

Things sandboxed by Firejail share the same host kernel. Therefore, kernel vulnerabilities could allow for privilege escalation.

Firejail itself is a security-hole. It is a massive root SetUID binary which can and has been used for privilege escalation. I avoid it entirely. Unprivileged sandboxes are better, but lack the built-in profiles provided by Firejail.

If I was trying to sandbox malware, I would use sydbox. It is memory safe (unlike Firejail or Bubblewrap), unprivileged (unlike Firejail), secure sandbox by default (unlike Bubblewrap), extensively uses all relevant Linux security features/modules (more than any other), and actually helps to stop LPE by re-implementing or denying dangerous syscalls like in the case of many of the recent vulnerabilities. Biggest caveat is that it’s not for beginners, even though it abstracts a lot of the complexity. I’d also neverbrun malware in just a sandbox, but use that alongside a proper VM.

TL;DR No sandbox will save you from good malware. Firejail might be enough for script kiddies, but could make your system more vulnerable to privilege escalation attacks. Avoid installing things you don’t need.

You don’t need to say the words “sandboxed” or “isolated” to say effectively the same thing. Your goal with distrobox was to keep the AUR malware separate from your normal system, no?

Security through obscurity is not security. The malware can do the same data exfiltration regardless of root access because the AUR malware has been about stealing secrets in user-readable directories. Setting a custom home for distrobox does not disallow access to the normal one.

Say for example that your default user home is /home/user and you set the distrobox home to /tmp/home

If you run ls $HOME inside distrobox it will list files in /tmp/home, but just as easily you could run ls /home/$USER and it would list in your default home. Or alternatively just use the find command and steal secrets without targeting the user home.

This is because changing the user home through distrobox doesn’t do anything about preventing directory traversal to your default home.

If your goal is to create a different environment and you don’t care that it won’t stop malware, use Incus or Podman directly. Distrobox is the wrong choice.

My point was simple: when dealing with malware, distrobox is not an effective method of creating a “different environment” because that is antithetical to its stated goals.

You can do whatever you want, I am not here to police your choice on your personal system. I only take issue with recommending this strategy to others.

Distrobox is not an isolated environment, it is quite the opposite. They say so themselves on their page:

Security implications

Isolation and sandboxing are not the main aims of the project, on the contrary it aims to tightly integrate the container with the host. The container will have complete access to your home, pen drive, and so on, so do not expect it to be highly sandboxed like a plain docker/podman container or a Flatpak.

I would argue that Docker isn’t a good way to stop malware either, since it is highly vulnerable to sandbox escape leveraging the shared host-guest kernel, like the many of LPEs that have been found in the last few months (example using copy-fail).

Docker is not a secure sandbox, Podman is not a secure sandbox, Flatpak is not a secure sandbox. Use a VM, or better yet, don’t use the AUR.

I recommend Murine Launcher as your launcher. It allows for themed icon packs.

https://www.murinelauncher.app/

https://github.com/alesimula/Murine-launcher

Proprietary OS. Idc if it is “Linux”. Android is Linux, and AOSP is open source. Why use a proprietary Linux distro over something like GrapheneOS which is fully free and open source software. I don’t think any person who cares about their privacy should use SailfishOS. It really seems like privacy-washing and OSS-washing. I say kick proprietary Linux distros out of the community.

Avoid Fedora Flatpaks (their repo, not Flathub) because of broken apps. OBS got pissed at them a while back for user reporting bugs that were only present in the downstream repackaging by Fedora. Broken af.

Not enough fire. Flamethrower those suckers.

Get the Windows 11 IoT LTSC specifically. IoT is better according to nassgrave, and Windows 11 so you get good compatibility with new games. Not much debloating is needed, just use WinUtil by CTT and tweak/disable shit.