Re: "For What It's Worth" (or How do I know my Gentoo source code hasn't been messed with?)

Hi Rich,
   Thanks for the response. I'll likely respond over the next few hours &
days in dribs and drabs...


On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 4:36 AM, Rich Freeman <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 6:04 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Essentially, what is the security model for all this source code and
how do
> > I verify that it hasn't been tampered with in some manner?
>
> Duncan already gave a fairly comprehensive response.  I believe the
> intent is to refactor and generally improve things when we move to
> git.  Even today there aren't a lot of avenues for slipping code in
> without compromising a gentoo server or manipulating your rsync data
> transfer (if it isn't secured).
>
> But...
>
> > There's certainly lots of other issues about security, like protecting
> > passwords, protecting physical access to the network and machines, root
kits
> > and the like, etc., but assuming none of that is in question (I don't
have
> > any reason to think the NSA has been in my home!) ;-) I'm looking for
info
> > on how the code is protected from the time it's signed off until it's
built
> > and running here.
>
> You may very well be underestimating the NSA here.  It has already
> come out that they hack into peoples systems just to get their ssh
> keys to hack into other people's systems, even if the admins that
> they're targeting aren't of any interest otherwise.  That is, you
> don't have to be a suspected terrorist/etc to be on their list.
>

Yeah, I've read that. It's my basic POV at this time that if the NSA
(or any other organization) wants something I have then they have
it already. However a good portion of my original thoughts are
along the line of your zero-day point below.

> I run a relay-only tor node (which doesn't seem to keep everybody and
> their uncle from blocking me as if I'm an exit node it seems).  I'd be
> surprised if the NSA hasn't rooted my server just so that they can
> monitor my tor traffic - if they did this to all the tor relays they
> could monitor the entire network, so I would think that this would be
> a priority for them.

The book I referenced made it clear that the NSA has a whole specific
program & toolset to target tor so I suspect you're correct, or even
underestimating yourself. That said, running tor is legal so more power
to you. I ran it a little to play with and found all the 2-level security
stuff
at GMail and YahooMail too much trouble to deal with.

>
> To root your system the NSA doesn't have to compromise some Gentoo
> server, or even tamper with your rsync feed.  The simplest solution
> would be to just target a zero-day vulnerability in some software
> you're running.  They might use a zero-day in some daemon that runs as
> root, maybe a zero-day in the kernel network stack, or a zero-day in
> your browser (those certainly exist) combined with a priv escalation
> attack.  If they're just after your ssh keys they don't even need priv
> escalation.  Those attacks don't require targeting Gentoo in
> particular.
>

Yep, and it's the sort of thing I was thinking about when I wrote this
yesterday:

I'm sitting here writing R code. I do it in R-Studio. How do I
know that every bit of code I run in that tool isn't being sent out to some
server? Most likely no one has done an audit of that GUI so I'm trusting
that the company isn't nefarious in nature.

I use Chrome. How do I know Chrome isn't scanning my local drives
and sending stuff somewhere? I don't.

In the limit, how would I even know if the Linux kernel was doing this? I
got source through emerge, built code using gcc, installed it by hand,
but I don't know what's really there and never will. I suspect the kernel
is likely one of the safer things on my box.

In the news yesterday was this story about some pedophile sending
child porn using GMail and then getting arrested because Google scans
'certain' attachments for known hashes. Well, that's the public story (so
far) but it seems to me that Google isn't likely creating those hashes but
getting them from the FBI, but the point is it's all being watched.

I think one way you might not be as John Le Carre-oriented as me is
that if I was the NSA and wanted inside of Linux (or M$FT or Apple) in
general, then I would simply pay people to be inside of those entities and
to do my bidding. Basic spycraft. Those folks would already be in the
kernel development area, or in KDE, or in the facilities that host the
code,
or where ever making whatever changes they want. They would have
already hacked how iOS does signing, or M$FT does updates, etc.

When it comes to security, choose whatever type you want, but how
do I as a user know that my sha-1 or pgp or whatever is what the
developers thought they were making publicly available. I don't and
probably never will.

> If your goal is to be safe from "the NSA"

It's not. Nor do I think I'll ever know if I am so I have to assume
I'm not. Life in the modern era...

<SNIP>
>
> In the early post-Snowden days I was more paranoid, but these days
> I've basically given up worrying about the NSA.

Similar for me, although reading this book, or watching the 2-episode
Frontline story, or (fill in whatever) raises the question, but more in a
general sense. I'm far less worried about the NSA and more worried
about things like general hackers after financial info or people looking
for code I'm writing.

Thanks for all the info, and thanks to Duncan also who I will write more
too when I've checked out all the technical stuff he posted.

Cheers,
Mark