TL;DR - About switching from Linux Mint to Qubes OS from among various other options that try to provide security out-of-the-box (also discussed: OpenBSD, SculptOS, Ghaf, GrapheneOS)
TL;DR - About switching from Linux Mint to Qubes OS from among various other options that try to provide security out-of-the-box (also discussed: OpenBSD, SculptOS, Ghaf, GrapheneOS)
I don’t understand… Your motivation for a secure operating system was from an incident where you were nearly social engineered? How will a “more secure” os help you with that?
More secure OSes limit what social engineering attacks can take place and what damage they can do.
OK, I’ll bite… How exactly?
often social eng attacks rely on a vulnerability as well e.g. getting your mark to open an Excel file that exploits a vulnerability in MS Office.
Sure, but if the compromise stays within its own app, like for a browser, sandboxing won’t help.
The bulk, and I mean like 95% of the compromises I see are normal employees clicking on things that “look legit”.
Excel is now wrapped in a browser. Discord, almost all work apps are all wrapped in a browser. So you can be completely locked down between apps like grapheneos, but if you are choosing to open links, no amount of sandboxing is going to save you.
This is why we deploy knowbe4 and proofpoint, cause people are a liabilities, even to themselves.
One example is on GrapheneOS, programs can’t touch system files due to no root access, and they also can’t access data files for other programs.
Sure, but op chose to follow a link. You can be sandboxed to high heaven and still get pwned if you make choices like that. Discord is particularly rife with this.
Yes, but I never said you won’t get pwned. I said that it would limit how it could be done and what damage it could do.
For instance, if you click a link and download something shitty, it can’t just steal your auth tokens on GrapheneOS because all of that is isolated to only the program that uses them. Meanwhile on Windows/Linux there are tons of Python scripts that do that. It would take extra steps on GrapheneOS for someone to use social engineering to hack someone’s Discord/Bank/etc account, which could be enough to prevent it for some people.
How is using disposable VMs in Qubes not going to help?
i have this well guarded city with big walls and tough gates. oh hey look someone is gifting me a big wooden horse, send them in! edit: thought i was funny but it sounds mean now. but i know how you feel, i got pwned once like 10y ago and they sent spam from my skype…
You aren’t going to like this:
Because if you got yourself pwned by a malicious link in discord, your account highjacked, etc., then having discord in a vm, container, chroot, jail, or whatever won’t help you on the server-side api abuse that got you pwned. In this case, you yourself should have been more vigilant.
From your article, and with respect, I think its nice you’re thinking more about security, but you’re mixing up quite a few concepts, and you should probably make smaller moves toward security that you actually understand, instead of going all-in on qubes with only a vague concept of the difference between sandboxing and paravirtualization.
Slightly harsh but that is the truth of it. Improving the walls and doors will help, but if the guard on the door can be convinced to admit an uninvited guest then the physical security will have much harder time protecting your data. The weakest part of any security system is the people.
Well, maybe not any, but most ;D
Yep.
I was hoping not to sound too harsh, I’ll have to work on that.
As long as it’s factual harsh is even welcome.