I am running a lot of tools inside sandbox now for exactly this reason. The damage is confined to the directory I'm running that tool in.
There is no reason for a tool to implicitly access my mounted cloud drive directory and browser cookies data.
troad 3 minutes ago [-]
MacOS has been getting a lot of slack recently for (correct) UI reasons, but I honestly feel like they're the closest to the money with granular app permissions.
Linux people are very resistant to this, but the future is going to be sandboxed iOS style apps. Not because OS vendors want to control what apps do, but because users do. If the FOSS community continues to ignore proper security sandboxing and distribution of end user applications, then it will just end up entirely centralised in one of the big tech companies, as it already is on iOS and macOS by Apple.
symaxian 1 minutes ago [-]
Sand-boxing such as in Snap and Flatpak?
its_magic 2 minutes ago [-]
I'm sure that will contribute to the illusion of security, but in reality the system is thoroughly backdoored on every level from the CPU on up, and everyone knows it.
There is no such thing as computer security, in general, at this point in history.
taftster 7 minutes ago [-]
I almost feel like this should just be the default action for all applications. I don't need them to escape out of a defined root. It's almost like your documents and application are effectively locked together. You have to give permissions for an app to extra data from outside of the sandbox.
Linux has this capability, of course. And it seems like MacOS prompts me a lot for "such and such application wants to access this or that". But I think it could be a lot more fine-grained, personally.
josephg 3 minutes ago [-]
I've been arguing for this for years. There's no reason every random binary should have unfettered, invisible access to everything on my computer as if it were me.
iOS and Android both implement these security policies correctly. Why can't desktop operating systems?
Someone1234 30 seconds ago [-]
I'm out of the loop: How did they bypass Notepad++'s digital signatures? I just downloaded it to double-check, and the installer is signed.
porise 3 minutes ago [-]
I guess package managers win in the end. I got two emails from my IT department in the last year telling me to immediately update it.
Naive question, but isn't this relatively safe information to expose for this level of attack? I guess the idea is to find systems vulnerable to 0-day exploits and similar based on this info? Still, that seems like a lot of effort just to get this data.
thatfunkymunki 7 minutes ago [-]
it's not "just to get that data", it's to confirm level of access, check for potential other exploiters or security software, identify the machine you have access to, identify what the machine has network connectivity to, etc. The attacker then maintains the c2 channel and can then perform their actual objective with the help of the data they have obtained.
troad 16 minutes ago [-]
It now seems to be best practice to simultaneously keep things updated (to avoid newly discovered vulnerabilities), but also not update them too much (to avoid supply chain attacks). Honestly not sure how I'm meant to action those at the same time.
taftster 3 minutes ago [-]
In the early days, updates quite often made systems less stable, by a demonstrable margin. My dad once turned off all updates on his Windows machine, with the ensuing peril that you can imagine.
Sadly, it feels like Microsoft updates lately have trended back towards being unreliable and even user hostile. It's messed up if you update and can't boot your machine afterwards, but here we are. People are going to turn off automatic updates again.
_factor 10 minutes ago [-]
Separate vetted security updates and major releases where needed, with stable point releases where applicable.
Auto apply urgent security updates at whatever interval you need, but prefer manual approvals if you have the staff.
Update from local images wherever possible.
TingPing 10 minutes ago [-]
I feel like supply chain attacks are the much rarer situation than real world exploits but I don’t have numbers.
krater23 2 minutes ago [-]
Supply chain attacks have impact on more systems, so it's more likely that your system is one of it. Opening a poisoned textfile that contains a exploit that attacks your text editor and fits exactly to your version is a rare event compared to automatically contacting a server to ask for a executable to execute without asking you.
worksonmine 3 minutes ago [-]
Debian stable. If you need something to be on the bleeding edge install it from backports or build from source. But keep most of your system boring and stable. It has worked fine for me for years.
krater23 1 minutes ago [-]
As long as you do regulary updates of your debian stable, you are not secured against supply chain attacks.
GauntletWizard 8 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
bluenose69 12 minutes ago [-]
The article starts out by saying that Notepad++ "is a text editor popular among developers". Really?
There is no reason for a tool to implicitly access my mounted cloud drive directory and browser cookies data.
Linux people are very resistant to this, but the future is going to be sandboxed iOS style apps. Not because OS vendors want to control what apps do, but because users do. If the FOSS community continues to ignore proper security sandboxing and distribution of end user applications, then it will just end up entirely centralised in one of the big tech companies, as it already is on iOS and macOS by Apple.
There is no such thing as computer security, in general, at this point in history.
Linux has this capability, of course. And it seems like MacOS prompts me a lot for "such and such application wants to access this or that". But I think it could be a lot more fine-grained, personally.
iOS and Android both implement these security policies correctly. Why can't desktop operating systems?
Naive question, but isn't this relatively safe information to expose for this level of attack? I guess the idea is to find systems vulnerable to 0-day exploits and similar based on this info? Still, that seems like a lot of effort just to get this data.
Sadly, it feels like Microsoft updates lately have trended back towards being unreliable and even user hostile. It's messed up if you update and can't boot your machine afterwards, but here we are. People are going to turn off automatic updates again.
Auto apply urgent security updates at whatever interval you need, but prefer manual approvals if you have the staff.
Update from local images wherever possible.