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posted by janrinok on Saturday November 19 2022, @10:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the stay-safe-and-secure dept.

We all know that when somebody gets unauthorised access to your computer hardware that security is out of the window! But what if you have to leave your hardware unattended but ostensibly in a 'secure' location - your hotel room or somebody else's home? fab23 has submitted this article on what you can do if that is the case:

The SANS Internet Storm Center published the guest diary Evil Maid Attacks - Remediation for the Cheap:

The so-called evil maid attack is an attack against hardware devices utilizing hard- and/or software. It is carried out when the hardware is left unattended, e.g., in a hotel room when you're out for breakfast. The attacker manipulates the device in a malicious way, e.g.:

There are several ways to minimize the risk of an unnoticed, successful evil maid attack. Which road you go depends on your personal threat model (and your budget, of course).

[...] If you want to have a cheap solution to be reasonably sure nobody messes unnoticed with your device when you have to leave it alone, you may carry out some countermeasures, e.g.:

Seal all screws with nail polish or glue with glitter pieces in it, and take pictures that are stored offline so that you will be able to spot manipulations

Seal not needed peripheral interfaces (e.g. USB ports)

Lock needed peripheral ports with tamper-proof solutions (e.g. one-time locks which have to be destroyed to access the port)

Leave the device in the bootup password prompt of the FDE (Full Disk Encryption) password:

  • Reboot your device to the FDE password prompt

  • and enter the first few chars of the correct password (important!)

  • make sure the device stays in this mode till you return (e.g. has enough power or the power supply is plugged in, disable energy saving settings, ...)

  • When you're back, enter the rest of the FDE password, and if the device boots, then you could be reasonably sure it hasn't been tampered with. Of course, you have to examine the device physically thoroughly, e.g., the screws, peripheral ports, seals, etc. One important precondition for this to work is that the FDE boot code allows the password prompt to stay as it is after entering some chars. Fedora 7 and Ubuntu 20.04 seem to work, but Bitlocker (Windows) does not. Is this bulletproof? No. Will this be reasonably secure? Depends on your threat model. But it's definitely better than doing nothing, having the OS left up and running, or having the device powered off completely. Stay safe and secure!

So, if you absolutely have no other option, what do you do to ensure that your data remains as secure as possible?


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Anartech Systems on Sunday November 20 2022, @01:44AM (4 children)

    by Anartech Systems (11857) on Sunday November 20 2022, @01:44AM (#1280576)

    > So, if you absolutely have no other option, what do you do to ensure that your data remains as secure as possible?
    Store all my secure data in an encrypted bucket on a VPS server, and use 2FA with the login method. You can clone my disk all you want, you might find some spicy memes you don't currently have in your collection and maybe the odd dick pic to properly mess with you, but that will be about it.

  • (Score: 1) by Anartech Systems on Sunday November 20 2022, @01:51AM

    by Anartech Systems (11857) on Sunday November 20 2022, @01:51AM (#1280577)

    s/server/host. BRB, going to the ATM machine to cash out my nerd credit.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 20 2022, @06:31AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday November 20 2022, @06:31AM (#1280615) Journal

    As long as you use your laptop to access that VPS server, it's a target. If the attacker manages to infiltrate your laptop, he can simply access the VPS the next time you access it (you can't even protect yourself by not connecting to a network, since without network you'll not be able to access that VPS). You'll do the login, so that's not a problem, and 2FA won't help with that.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:41AM (1 child)

    by driverless (4770) on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:41AM (#1280629)

    Store all my secure data in an encrypted bucket on a VPS server,

    Don't have anything of interest or worth stealing on my devices. Being too boring to be of interest is also a defence mechanism.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday November 20 2022, @09:30AM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 20 2022, @09:30AM (#1280645) Journal

      It doesn't have to be secret information.

      Your email address book is valuable for identity theft, not only of yourself but for each of the people in there. With access to your laptop somebody could send emails purporting to be you and also make sure that you don't see the replies as they gather information on somebody else, If you ever log in to another network using your laptop then you have just provided access to that network for somebody who isn't supposed to be there.

      You might think that you are boring. Those that practise social engineering think that you and your laptop are very valuable assets because you don't even think that your data is worth protecting.