_wldu

I attended a USENIX LISA conference a few years ago in Seattle. I met a lot of people and saw a lot of demos. Before I went, I thought Facebook was a joke. After the conference, I was convinced they were doing large systems better than anybody.

Maybe that has changed, but at that time they made the other big companies look like they were way behind.

I drink instant coffee from Walmart. It's cheap and effective. I actually like the taste too.

I go into the office daily and it's now quieter than my house! There's hardly anyone there. I get more done due to less chit-chat.

I'd be hesitant to consume this in a firewall or DNS RPZ. What if someone reported google.com as malicious?

I no longer use Tor either (unless I have to for work projects such as remote pentesting).

What is you opinion of Landlock (Linux kernel 5.13 and newer)? If we wrap vanilla FireFox in LandLock, proxy that to tor and use Apparmor/Tomoyo to further limit what FireFox could do (when it gets compromised) then I think that would be a much safer approach than using the Tor Browser Bundle.

Here's a landlock wrapper (in Go) for FireFox: https://github.com/62726164/misc/blob/main/go/landlock/firef...

Also, I've only ever been able to get Tomoyo to work as MAC for FireFox. SELinux and Apparmor were too difficult.

Thanks for that info. That's unfortunate.

Does anyone know if Red Hat enabled landlock in this release? The kernel supports it since 5.13 and they are running 5.14. The kernel config should look something like this:

CONFIG_SECURITY_LANDLOCK=y

CONFIG_LSM="landlock,lockdown,yama,..."

Everyone should PGP sign their git commits with a secret key stored on a YubiKey. Make small changes to your code, read the diff, then commit and sign before pushing to the repo. IMPO, that's really the only way to protect the integrity of source code.

If you are adding large changes without carefully reading the diffs and you do not sign the commits it's just a matter of time.

They care deeply about software security and memory flaws (everyone should). If rust had an ISO standard, then it could be used in more sensitive military and aerospace systems.

https://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf

Also, when something is an ISO standard, then governments can't legislate that some countries may not be allowed to use it.

https://help.duo.com/s/article/7544?language=en_US

Once rust stabilizes, I think it needs an ISO standard like C and C++ have. I can't see automobile manufactures using rust without one. One reason C and C++ are still widely used is due to this. When we are writing code that is expected to run for decades, having a corporate/community backed language is not sufficient. We need global standards and versions that we can rely on decades latter.

Who needs to send 20,000 emails per hour? Other than spamming people, who actually needs to do that?

So when organizations hire people that do not understand the DNS or PKC to maintain their DNS then it is the organization's fault (rather than the person who made the change). I accept that and agree.

DNSSEC is notorious for breaking things [1]. I use it on most of my domains, but I would not just 'enable' it on a domain that I cared about and that had real users without a lot of thought and planning. Nor should you.

[1] - https://ianix.com/pub/dnssec-outages.html

Thank you! And, yes, I agree. I don't want FireFox or Chrome reading ~/.ssh or ~/.gnupg or any other directories in my home that it has no business reading.

Maybe one day we'll have web browsers that don't have any C code. Nothing against C. It's a great systems language, but I'd rather my web browser not use it.

Browsing the web is probably the most dangerous thing the average computer user does.

I firmly believe that isolation is the future of endpoint security and I like experimenting with Mandatory Access Control (MAC) on Linux. Tomoyo is my favorite major MAC/LSM in the Linux kernel.

If you have a newer kernel (5.13 or greater), you may like to experiment with landlock. It's pretty cool and unlike FireJail, no suid required. Here's a landlock wrapper for Firefox:

https://github.com/62726164/misc/blob/main/go/landlock/firef...

I'd like to learn more about open source/free Windows and MacOS MAC tools. If you know of any, please post about your experience with them.

Edit: This Windows functionality seems similar to seccomp and pledge: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winnt/ns-...

I always ask what is your favorite language and why. And I've never laughed at the answer. I'm genuinely curious to know why they feel that way. I've learned a lot from the answers (about the candidate and about the language they like most).

If someone laughed and walked out. I would ignore it. I would be surprised at that type of reaction, but would remain professional and make a mental note to not work there. That's a very bad sign.

Diversity is what makes us strong. This applies to programming languages and differences of opinions as well. Sure, someone has to call the shots and make a decision (we will all use Go or Java) but having devs who know other languages, and have strong views as to why they like them, is a good thing.

I work on-site and from home. There are pros and cons to each. Some people prefer one or the other. A hybrid solution is probably best, but I can do either or both. Each side has valid arguments (empty office space, office rent cost, lack of in-person chemistry) versus (no commute, more time to focus, just as productive).

Some people do take advantage of WFH and work less. Some people who cannot WFH feel it is unfair. It's a complex issue and both sides should work together to come to a fair solution for everyone. Bickering about it and not compromising is unproductive.

Yubikeys are awesome. I have a copy of a signing only PGP key on a Yubikey and I use it to sign all of my git commits. Easy and very secure. Cheap too.

That's probably a cyber crime in most US states.

Edit: You guys have no sense of humor.

I agree with the general sentiment, but I would add that Go is a very simple language. It's probably the simplest language I have ever used (besides C).

If you are interesting enough, Signal doesn't help at all. Some nation state will have NSO infect your mobile device with Pegasus and record everything you type, say and do.

People need to understand this. There is no solution for mobile device compromise other than to stop using these devices.

And if you cannot stop using them, then you must understand that everything you type, say and do on or around your mobile device is (or will be) public. So treat it like a public device at all times.

C++0x is one of the reasons Go was created. C++ was getting far too complex:

"For me, the reason I was enthusiastic about Go was just about the same time we were starting on Go, I read (or tried to read) the C++0x proposed standard. And that was the convincer for me." - Ken Thompson

17:45 mark here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sln-gJaURzk

You can use strace to get this information. Linux also offers seccomp and landlock which are very similar to pledge and unveil.

I agree that SELinux is largely unusable in the real-world (especially for custom apps). I've had better experience with path based MACs like tomoyo and apparmor. Firejail is also great for end users who want to safely do online banking and surf the web at random on the same machine.

IMPO, this sort of isolation is the future of endpoint security. Linux has seccomp (to filter syscalls), landlock (to limit filesystem access), and other ways that devs can build these restrictions into their source code (no external MAC needed). I've lost count of the major and minor MACs that Linux offers now. OpenBSD has pledge and unveil that basically allow the same sort of thing.

I would not consider docker/podman as equivalent. They are great for bundling and running apps, but they are not doing mandatory access control. So be careful if you consider docker as a replacement for SELinux... it's not the same thing at all.

I'm not sure it is. Software development has become more decentralized and more complex than it was 20 years ago. It's also much more accessible to more people who may be great programmers but not really aware of code/repository security.

Most software developers do not sign their git commits. And if they do, they probably aren't doing it properly (store keys on a YubiKey or only use QubesOS with an isolated dev qube and split GPG).

If you do any sort of dev work, you really need to isolate that activity from the other things you do online and generate a signing only GPG subkey and handle it properly and sign all of your git commits. I think this is vital to ensuring code integrity as if you do not do this, you probably won't even realize when someone has tampered with your code.

Hope this helps.

Consider buying stock in companies that produce real products that everyone needs. Food, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, hygiene, etc. It's hard to go wrong doing that.

It has more insulation value than wood too and termites don't eat it.

Downside is it can crack (especially on unstable ground) when settling.

Yes. Anyone who has listened to a FM radio station in a car traveling down the highway would understand that FM stations (while clear and abundant) quickly fade away as you drive out of range.

You can also run a simple rest API on the machine hosting the sqlite DB and access it from other machines. I've found that works fairly well.

Clients -> Internet -> API -> sqlite

Compliance and audit driven organizations are more likely to do these things. They want consistency and control across the org. What they fail to realize is how that same consistency and low level control can be used against them. And, more importantly, the scale of the abuse will be as efficient as the scale of management.

It's sort of like building an encryption backdoor (only for law enforcement) and then to be shocked and surprised when criminals use it against you. Security technologists who know better are not consulted and/or their advice to isolate and diversify is not taken.