[Gllug] Open Source Hardware User Group meeting on Thursday.

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

Walter Stanish wrote:
>>>> Believe me I'd love to feel safe enough to go out and leave my front
>>>> door unlocked all day but that's just not the world we live in any more,
>>>> if I had no possesions maybe I would feel differently but I do and I owe
>>>> it to my clients to take all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of
>>>> their stuff too.
>>>>         
>>> If you are that paranoid - and there is call for it - consider 'new user
>>> profile
>>> running in a cut-down, custom-compiled browser in a new virtual machine
>>> with highly restricted permissions, accessed via VNC exclusively' as your
>>> new default browser....
>>>
>>>       
>> Erk! Since when has VNC been a secure technology!?
>>
>>     
>
> Well it's true there have been quite a few VNC remote exploits over the
> years.
> Mostly I just automatically think 'container-based virtualisation' instead
> of
> VMWare/KVM/etc. by default these days, and therefore a method for GUI export
> from the VM is needed.  To me it feels better than opening up X11.  Doesn't
> KVM or virtualbox or one of those operate with VNC-powered consoles by
> default anyway?
>
> For most situations there's no need for a VMs or SSH tunelling or TOR
>   
>> (or sarcasm ;) although all that stuff has it's place and in some
>> situations would be sensible to use, if for example you were a tech
>> consultant visiting China for example
>>     
>
>
> Ha!  This sort of threat is thrown way out of proportion by the western
> media.
> I lived there most of last decade, and I'm actually going there on
> business in a
> couple of weeks.  Needless to say, I won't be taking any extra security
> measures.
>
> - Walter
>
>   


Interesting, I heard an interview recently with a security consultant
who went to speak at a Chinese security conference last year and their
spooks broke into his hotel room while he was out and tried to install a
trojan on his laptop. He knew he was being physically trailed as after a
couple of days he confronted the guy who seemed to be following him and
he came clean. They also were clearly monitoring the internet traffic
from his hotel and trying to crack his server as he found numerous odd
connection requests from Chinese IP addresses in his logs that began
while he was away.

Maybe he was getting an unusual amount of heat coz he was in the
security industry but that's still a fair example of why one might want
to tool up with TOR and suchlike.

Roger.
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