Comment by awinter-py | Hacker News Reader

Comment by awinter-py | Hacker News Reader

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related support ticket from someone trying to log into device w/ work account without inheriting workplace MDM policy

https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/117916330/how-t...

> Even if the Chromebook is your private device and your owner account is your private @gmail.com account, once you sign in with a managed account, even using a separate profile, the managed account polices become active.

> This is NOT a bug. It's required to maintain security of the managed environment. Whenever the managed account is active, ChromeOS management and the policies set by your administrators pwn the entire machine.

> Google promises bulletproof security to customers who license Chrome OS management, and having any instance of an active non-managed account available when a managed account and its resources are active is a potential security hole.

not a chrome-os user -- I imagine you can access the G acct via a browser without signing in the whole OS? if 'signing into gmail signs in the OS', maybe can do it via crostini linux

re law: illinois is the state that has the biometric privacy law iirc? you may be able to do a civil suit via that, if the device is sharing face images and you really didn't consent and you can prove it and the law was written with your situation and mind and CPS hasn't indemnified big G. my guess is you'd have to pay a few $k to a lawyer to evaluate the case and then many more $k on the suit, plus you probably have a TOS problem.

The ending of that post (trimmed above) is also important:

> So you can boot into your personal account and do your personal business and then reboot into your business acount and do your business' business, but never the twain shall meet.

Not a chomeOS user, so maybe I'm not familiar with the terminology, but what is the difference between "log into" an account and "boot into" one?

Are there different ways how you can add multiple accounts to a Chromebook and the OP just used the wrong one?

ChromeOS developer here (opinions are my own, etc etc), writing as a user though since I don't work on this specific field myself but I've been using chromebooks daily with multiple accounts (corp and personal) daily for the greater part of a decade.

You have a few options on how you log into ChromeOS. Once you boot the device, you can choose which account to sign in as. If it's your corp account, you get whatever corp policies get applied to you (like no play store, no linux, etc). If you log into your personal account, you don't get those restrictions (there's a note to be made here for stuff like enrolled devices which I don't think applies to OP and I'm not too familiar with anyway).

However, once you are already logged into an account on the device, you can also choose to "sign in with another account". This makes you run two accounts at the same time, you can swap between them without using passwords, etc (it's like switching a virtual desktop/workspace). You can even transfer windows from one account to the other so you can simply alt+tab between them as you would on a single account (for example I am typing this at work on my personal account in a window running inside my corp account). In this situation, whichever account logged in first is the account that "owns" the session and has policies applied. If you log into your corp account with play store disabled, and then log into your personal account as a secondary account, you can't use the play store on it. If you log out everything and re-log with your personal account, you will still be able to use the play store there.

Thanks a lot for that info, that clears up a lot! So an unmanaged Chromebook can't be "taken over" by logging into a managed account, the policies are only active until you reboot.

Still, if account policies "leak" into unmanaged accounts when both accounts are active at the same time, this sounds like a potential vulnerability: E.g., if the managed account has a policy that sets proxy settings or force-installs a particular browser extension, would those policies also be applied to the unmanaged account?

> So an unmanaged Chromebook can't be "taken over" by logging into a managed account, the policies are only active until you reboot.

That's my understanding, yes. You can't "infect" an unmanaged account from a managed one, as far as I know at least.

> E.g., if the managed account has a policy that sets proxy settings or force-installs a particular browser extension, would those policies also be applied to the unmanaged account?

I'm not 100% sure if those policies would apply, I admit I'm not familiar with the account enrolment details of ChromeOS since I work at a much lower level. However, from what I know, whenever you go to sign-in to a secondary account in the same session as your primary one, there's a big warning telling you to be careful because you're basically "entrusting" your secondary account to the primary one and to not share an account session with another account you do not trust. This I always assumed was due to reasons like (for example) ending up literally sharing account2 window with account1 session, if you bring a program running in the account2 "domain" (filesystem, etc) into the account1 UI session, the account1 can take a screenshot of it (screenshot will be saved into account1 local files) and that can leak data obviously.

> In this situation, whichever account logged in first is the account that "owns" the session and has policies applied.

So if you log in to your personal account first, and then into the corporate account, the corporate policies are not applied to either account? There are probably a bunch of corporate types who will be very surprised to learn this…

I admit I've never tried this so I don't know which policies do or do not apply and how. For things like the play store (which is what I've worked on in the past), only the "primary" account (the one you logged into first) will have access to it so if your secondary account has the play store blocked anyway, you won't be able to use it with that account so it doesn't matter much.

I don't know about other policies.

Typically, the corporate login will be blocked if you attempt this.

From the sound of it (haven't used ChromeOS in ~4 years), "log into" means switching users without powering off the laptop, while "boot into" means to reboot the computer and log in as the other user. For a device that is supposedly built around security, needing to know that the "Switch User" menu shouldn't ever be used to switch the user is something of a footgun.

"Shouldn't ever be used" is an overstatement though. My employer (Google, no less) would apply restrictions, but not hoover logs from the personal profile. Meaning it's still good to have messaging and music there while working.

Chrome has a log in screen like windows and Mac. You can login and out between google accounts like a gmail.com or a k12 account. Similarly but not the same— there is a second “add account” after logged in. This secondary account does allows access email but not override them, bookmarks, etc

Hmm.

I’m not super familiar with ChromeOS’s MDM stuff… but I wonder what would happen if someone were to log in to two separate managed accounts, for two separate organizations, with conflicting requirements?

It'll block the multi-login and require you to fully sign out of everything, THEN log into the other organization account.

don't cross the streams

Suing the CPS over this is simply taking money out of everyone else's pocket for your own enrichment.

Yeah, why anyone gotta make trouble for the guvnah

It's to make them stop doing it, not to profit.

Right now they're spending money to spy on students, so fighting that is worth it.

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