Re: MokSec - The Security Framework

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To: List for Openmoko community discussion <community@...>
Date: Monday, July 14, 2008 - 11:16 am

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On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Kalle Happonen
wrote:

> What an insult! *slap* :P. No I'm not a windows user. and I can set the

Ok, sorry, that was a too mean joke :P
The situation with no root password set is of course not bearable, but I'm
pretty sure that this issue will be solved in a consumer-ready release.
What I'd imagine would be a kind of "first-run-guide", that "forces" (or
allows, however you want :) ) the user to do all the important settings at
the first run of the phone (could be used for backup purposes, too, e.g.
load an xml-file with the settings).
Would make the life way easier for newbies.

However, later on an easily configurable firewall would be almost

A firewall is always a more or less big piece of software, always not the
best for performance, and always a security risk (if it's not dedicated). It
also is not possible to do a easy and _good_ configuration, so however it's
done, it's always suboptimal.
There are not too much services running, and all of them are open source
software, so that is imho not that a big deal.

> >

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On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Kalle Happonen <kalle.happonen@iki.fi> wrote:
 

What an insult! *slap* :P. No I'm not a windows user. and I can set the

root password on my device, but defaults matter. And they matter a lot

if openmoko will become more mass-market. A firewall migth be a bit

heavy, I agree, every watt and cycle should try to be saved, but making

dropbear just listen to the usb interface would be a pretty good

compromise, if that is possible.

 
Ok, sorry, that was a too mean joke :P
The situation with no root password set is of course not bearable, but I'm pretty sure that this issue will be solved in a consumer-ready release.
What I'd imagine would be a kind of "first-run-guide", that "forces" (or allows, however you want :) ) the user to do all the important settings at the first run of the phone (could be used for backup purposes, too, e.g. load an xml-file with the settings).

Would make the life way easier for newbies.


However, later on an easily configurable firewall would be almost

essential imho. Connecting to the phone (any port) over the wifi should

(almost?)never be allowed as default. Even if the point with the phone

is that users can do what they want, it doesn't mean that the apps they

install shouldn't be protected. And a firewall is almost the only viable

way. There's no easy way of making all the apps listen to just one

interface, and while host.allow/deny is more lightweight than a

firewall, those don't allow distinguishing of interface.

 
A firewall is always a more or less big piece of software, always not the best for performance, and always a security risk (if it's not dedicated). It also is not possible to do a easy and _good_ configuration, so however it's done, it's always suboptimal.

There are not too much services running, and all of them are open source software, so that is imho not that a big deal.



No, not the whole system. But well the user homedir would be basically

what we want to protect, and if it was on it's own partition, there is

kernel support for it already.

I think completely dynamic decryption would be too cumbersone to use. If

you mean that it would need an unlock for every received sms (to get the

contact behind the number) and phone call, it's just unfeasible. If you

want to protect the en/decryption key, it needs a passphrase that is

long enough to be of any benefit. The other option is a PKI enabled SIM,

which would be cool. Hence it should be unlocked only once, at bootup.

The sim pin could also be saved on the encrypted partition (maybe the

pin itself again encrypted with the passphrase, so it's not accessible

easily at runtime) so that the user only needs to authenticate once to

use the phone. There could be then options to forget the encryption key

either locally or via a "magic sms".

No it doesn't. Everything NEEDS to be decrypted automagically when the

phone is on. Otherwise it's just unusable. The whole system shouldn't be

encrypted, that's just waste.  But having a personal area decrypted at

startup means that only you can access it at bootup, and one can add the

option of remotely disabling access to it. That is very much security,

way more than phones usually have nowadays, even more than

laptops/desktops, but not too much to make it hard/annoying to use.

The fact that it has package management doesn't mean much in itself. I

think current linux distributions have a pretty good model. A separate

security updates repo, which just releases security patches, and since

these are an security update of the recommended version, they don't

(well shouldn't) break anything, so they can even be pretty safely

applied automatically. Again, defaults matter. If you need to log in,

run opkg update; opkg upgrade I bet that most of the phones never get

patched.



Cheers,

Kalle





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Messages in current thread:
MokSec - The Security Framework, Yorick Moko, (Sun Jul 13, 8:07 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Kalle Happonen, (Mon Jul 14, 3:20 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Jay Vaughan, (Mon Jul 14, 10:16 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, thomasg, (Mon Jul 14, 4:03 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Kalle Happonen, (Mon Jul 14, 9:35 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, thomasg, (Mon Jul 14, 11:16 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Kalle Happonen, (Mon Jul 14, 12:19 pm)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Tilman Baumann, (Mon Jul 14, 10:38 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, arne anka, (Mon Jul 14, 11:08 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, thomasg, (Mon Jul 14, 11:19 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, arne anka, (Mon Jul 14, 11:22 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, thomasg, (Mon Jul 14, 11:27 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Kalle Happonen, (Mon Jul 14, 12:13 pm)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, thomasg, (Mon Jul 14, 12:18 pm)
RE: MokSec - The Security Framework, Crane, Matthew, (Mon Jul 14, 12:46 pm)
RE: MokSec - The Security Framework, Crane, Matthew, (Mon Jul 14, 10:57 am)
RE: MokSec - The Security Framework, Knight Walker, (Tue Aug 19, 2:58 pm)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Robert Schuster, (Sun Jul 13, 9:00 am)
Re: MokSec - The Security Framework, Bumbl, (Sun Jul 13, 8:38 am)