Don’t know why Linux is still the only recommended OS with so bad security and privacy from applications lol. For the interested, SELinux would prevent this, apparmor just sucks. Use fedora if you want Linux.
And before folks start the whole “privacy on Linux” tirade, if you can trust 1Password and Proton on their policies, you can trust Apple and Microsoft too. You just need to understand the exact policies thoroughly.
Privacy on Linux does not mean a whole lot if every program you run can trivially pwn you and your printer service can pwn your network.
If I understood this correctly, local user can mount arbitrary filesystem? Then I should better not trust my family members and should use Windows instead.
Not much worse than Windows, which has been exploited for nearly a decade by the same bug across five nations (and Microsoft doesn’t classify this bug as a security vulnerability, so God knows when will people on LTSC versions of Windows receive the fix), or MacOS, where any process can just ask for all your secrets and receive them.
No. Local user is misleading since it does not mean user who is sitting before the screen. Applications can do the same, and unprivileged namespace containment does not seem to work.
I don’t get the point? Every software is buggy (and linux kernel has so many unresolved issues that there is an entire business selling the better pax kernel), and Windows and MacOS are provably more secure than mainline linux distributions out of the box (and more secure post configurations too in case of most user configurations I see for linux). The question is explicitly about why not recommend other systems.
Actually, @jonah can you split this into 2 topics. I think I made a mistake lumping this news with my opinions. I would rather have all the tired “linux better” arguments in a different thread. Thanks.
are the parts I would remove, and keep this in the news post itself:
Mostly because I am not so sure about general fedora since my installation of fedora with custom policies blocks it (might spin a VM and test later). Use fedora is just general advice, since Debian is a burning stockpile of garbage, arch is not used by general folks (Ubuntu or Linux mint is, thanks to the “beginner” guides out there), and anything ubuntu touches turns to crap (see snaps, see apparmor).
For the threat models of common individuals, the tendency of local governments requesting data from companies, collecting telemetry in-transit and the companies themselves gathering too much information is a much more imminent threat than targeted malware. Linux offers protection against dragnet surveillance, while other major OSes (excluding BSD) make a concerted effort to track their users, which is exploited by non-state and state actors.
For those who do have to contend with targeted malware - the best way to evade this is (aside from not using the internet) is to stay anonymous, so LEA or an evil corporation doesn’t know which browser to exploit through a watering hole attack, doesn’t know which email to send a malicious file to. powerful state actors largely rely on dragnet surveillance to find vectors of attack for their malware, and can’t attack a user that they don’t know about or blends in with a crowd of thousands of other users, due to lack of unique identifiers.
Linux is far more customizable and configurable than Microsoft and Apple devices, you can effectively harden your system substantially by using VMs, sandboxes, removing programs you don’t need. There’s typically a lot less bloat, you can run Linux in live mode, route all your OS’ traffic through Tor, etc.
Apple & Microsoft policies are actively hostile against their users. Proton might give an IP address to LEA, but Microsoft is actively scanning your emails for wrongthink, ready to give all of your habits, telemetry to law enforcement or hackers who pretend to be.
If security is important, this should be a base assumption regardless of what OS you’re using. Even if you’re on a “more protected” Windows, running a bunch of untrusted programs is just asking for disaster.
You criticize Ubuntu for something for which Fedora’s default is even worse. Unprivileged user namespaces are enabled by default without noteworthy restrictions on Fedora, since everything runs as unconfined_t, except some system services.
So you tell me that you wrote a custom Selinux policy without knowing what Fedora’s default policy does. Hard to believe, since the latter is usually the starting point when adjusting policies.
What exactly does Fedora by default do better than Ubuntu and Debian?
Are all PG forum members similarly hostile and bad at comprehension? All I have seen in the forum is takes like “incognito mode protects users in browsers” to whatever this is.
No, I criticize Ubuntu for selling as solution something which is not even a bandage. Fedora does not sell pipedreams of confinement and false sense of security. Fedora is working on a solution that actually works as advertised, and are hence facing issues with the linux desktop model itself being built upon hopelessly insecure things like userns.
Wrong. Most system services are confined now.
No, but I am telling you to retake ESL 101 classes, because I said “My installation of fedora with custom policies” not “Installation of fedora with my custom policies”. So eager to jump in without any actual useful input.
It is embarrassing to ask this while pretending to be some linux expert. Debian started signing packages (not metadata)? Default firewall? Default confinement? Bleeding edge packages with fixes available now? Secure boot supported now? Backports delivery time stabilised yet? This is not even getting into kernel hardening and MAC. Maybe reevaluate your miserable attempt at putting down facts as misinformation. Maybe less FUD and more non-blind reading would help.