Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 7, 2021 3:48 PM

@ Who?,

in fact, they are Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program certified so these devices should be right for most uses.

You still need to but a second one in series from a different manufacturer and instrument the DMZ between them.

I’ve mentioned this before when talking about the “Garden Path” design.

Clive Robinson • January 15, 2021 6:11 AM

@ Who?

No single device should be fully trusted.

I think with commodity systems since 2010 at least if not earlier, “no device can be trusted”

What went in as “convenience” became extended to a “conduit” for various reasons, which in turn became major channels through which information became collected for “engineering and support”, and in time that information broadened into anything that could be turned into an income stream.

As an example PC’s that are on even though they are off. Thst is they are actually dormant waiting for a signal on the network or similar. They then wake up a “managment CPU”. Which is a nice convenience if you are a system admin wanting to change a configuration. But then this extended to patching and other tasks that are equivalent to tasks attackers use to add malware to a system. But there was Dr Watson, there to send back bug reports to MS on a blue screen of death. Thid got expanded to report back all sorts of information so amongst other things “support” could not just see what software is running but take over control of the computer.

Each step along the way increasingly encroached on privacy and reduced security…

We don’t “own” our computers Microsoft made that clear by forcing people to download Win10 without their permission.

So “trust” in both the normal human and in the ICTsec meaning are gone. Comercial Computers are without doubt “The enemy in the camp”…

In human terms a few hundred years ago nobles who faught as knights if captured were ransomed, but untill such time as the exchange was made they were “paroled” that is they could wander around camp fairly freely having promised not to escape etc. Well the promises got broken and over the years there were “Prisoner of war” camps that were also became internment internment camps.

We need to take almost similar mitigations with computers these days…

But doing so has a cost a very large cost just as it does with human prisoners, and it’s not one many would wish to incure if they could avoid it. Whilst that was once possible the reality these days is that commodity computers are designed to be the spys and turncoats in our midst…

How we deal with it depends on what our specific needs are. But as with humans segregation and the limiting of communications form the basis of it all. Which tends to reduce a computers utility thus a balance has to be sort, that in turn has to be evaluated constantly.

Fairly easy to say, not at all easy to do, even for those with knowledge and experience. The skill sets required are not generally found in more than a few people… Whilst teaching the skills is like most teaching a mixture of learning and applying, the mindset realy only comes about by being “battle hardened”, and it’s not the way most people would want to go about aquiring a skill.