linux-hardened VS pass-import

Glossing over their hardening guide, we notice that the kernel-hardened package is mentioned. This is a fork of what once was the kernel of GrapheneOS. While this hardened kernel can be used on a variety of distros, unfortunately this doesn't apply to Fedora Silverblue. Furthermore, I haven't seen any mention of the hardened kernel being used on openSUSE Tumbleweed. Therefore I see no reason to believe that this is possible on openSUSE Aeon either. Though, I'd love to be corrected on this!

Here's the GitHub page for the linux-hardened package in the official Arch repos. You will find that lots of changes come from GrapheneOS. "Forked from GrapheneOS" is in tiny, tiny text near the top-left of the web page underneath the project name.

Here is the source code for the hardened Linux kernel.

so that we can use it liberally in CLI) > **Additionally, here's a 'building from the source section** - https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/blob/main/docs/getting-started.md#building-from-source ### Running Firecracker > "*In production, Firecracker is designed to be run securely, inside an execution jail, carefully set up by the jailer binary. This is how our integration test suite does it. However, if you just want to see Firecracker booting up a guest Linux machine, you can do that as well.*" 1. We need to first obtain an "uncompressed Linux kernel binary, and an ext4 file system image (to use as rootfs)" ; great, these are two things that we need to seek out before we move forward in our 'adventure' (*this really feels like a "quest" of some sort, like the ones that they forced you to play on Runescape back in the days*) **How to Decompress Linux Kernel** (explicit instructions to be honest here) - https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/Booting/linux-bootstrap-5.html **Linux-Hardened Kernel** - https://github.com/anthraxx/linux-hardened (this is something that they're all still actively working on at this very point in time) They also say that we need an 'ext4 file system image' (where do we obtain this from?) - found it **Full Guide on How to Create an EXT4 filesystem image here** -https://fabianlee.org/2020/01/13/linux-mounting-a-loopback-ext4-xfs-filesystem-to-isolate-or-enforce-storage-limits/ Assuming that the above has been handled, the directions insist that we create two separate shell prompts, (one to run Firecracker, and another one to control it [by writing to the API socket]; both shells have to run "in the same directory where the firecracker binary was placed") ^^ What? - This is a pain in the ass because this is something that they should've mentioned earlier (obv. everyone is going to move a binary where the rest of their binaries go ; and you're not going to just load up some random project to be used in that manner) - Not even sure what the end goal of opening up an API socket here would really be But fuck it, let's just assume that we play ball and we adhere to all of these (additional) steps that we're being put through (just for the setup up this virtualization tool!). ### Following Through on the Next Steps 1. Ensuring that Firecracker can create its own API ``` bash rm -f /tmp/firecracker.socket

Officially supported kernels Community support on forum and bug reporting is available for officially supported kernels. Stable — Vanilla Linux kernel and modules, with a few patches applied. https://www.kernel.org/ || linux Hardened — A security-focused Linux kernel applying a set of hardening patches to mitigate kernel and userspace exploits. It also enables more upstream kernel hardening features than linux. https://github.com/anthraxx/linux-hardened || linux-hardened Longterm — Long-term support (LTS) Linux kernel and modules. https://www.kernel.org/ || linux-lts Zen Kernel — Result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systems. Some more details can be found on https://liquorix.net (which provides kernel binaries based on Zen for Debian). https://github.com/zen-kernel/zen-kernel || linux-zen

Overall those patches do protect you in a lot of cases. Per default upstream features are chose to honor security first. Furthermore patches do frequently protect against upstream failures and vulnerabilities. One of the latest examples is CVE-2022-1729 https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2022/q2/122 a local privilege vulnerability that linux-hardened simply protects since before day 0: https://github.com/anthraxx/linux-hardened/commit/4dd6bdf3b079ef73e597661ee961d225bfccbe2a On top the approach in several places of fail-early instead of potentially continuing with known corruption or certain use-after-free regularly uncovers problems that get fixed upstream and where the vanilla kernels just keep on running, which include exploitable problems. One example of a faulty very recent commit that has been bisected and fixed because of linux-hardened: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/deller/linux-fbdev.git/commit/?h=for-next&id=acde4003efc16480375543638484d8f13f2e99a3

Those two don't protect the kernel itself from "misuse". To do that, there are ways like kernel hardening 3, using hardened kernel 4 5.

> I always tell these people to just sign up for a password manager and they always resist and say no. I must be missing something obvious.

Maybe they don't want to be relying on a random third-party for all their passwords?

Rather than getting them to sign up for a password manager, what about getting them to install a password manager? I use https://www.passwordstore.org/ - it encrypts your passwords with GPG, and shares the storage via a Git repository for synchronisation between different machines.

That way you can delegate the password handling to another program, e.g. a password manager like pass(1) (https://www.passwordstore.org/) or some interactive graphical prompt.

I want to move to something compatible with https://www.passwordstore.org/ - an open standard for keeping your passwords in a folder encrypted with OpenPGP.

The problem is that I'm nervous to give an unknown Android app and browser plugin total control of my passwords and access to my github account when I don't have time to review it's code properly. I have a bit more trust ing the command line tools, but I'd like to be sure that more people are looking at the code before I trust my life to it.

> Create a system or pattern based on url or brand and mentally hash it into a password.

Doesn't sound very secure. Also when you realize that you anyway have to trust cryptography, I believe it starts making a lot of sense to have an actual cryptographic key and encrypt it with one good random password you learn by heart.

I use pass https://www.passwordstore.org/, which encrypts my passwords with my GPG key, which comes from my Yubikey, which I unlock with a password. That means that I only need to remember one password, and it feels a lot more secure than your pattern based on url or brand.

i use pass and keep my database on a local git repo. it encrypts your passwords with gpg and is a really simple command line program

If you want portability and simplicity, there's a project called simply pass that uses standard *nix utilities (and git, I believe) to manage passwords from CLI.

0. Pass is just text files encrypted with gpg. I needed just one password on one work computer, where I had my gpg key, but not all my passwords. Decrypted the file and that was it.

1. There are plugins and web clients: https://www.passwordstore.org/#extensions

I've been incredibly happy with https://www.passwordstore.org/ for years. The data store is a file hierarchy, with the files themselves encrypted with GPG. Sync is via git. TOTP support with a plugin.