Hey guys, first post here and on an alt, I hope I don’t get flamed. If there’s not enough info I’ll post another thread tomorrow.
Its been ~5-7 years since using Linux (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Debian/Mint/Fedora/etc) as my daily driver. Windows since then for dev and games with kids, but now I have a laptop that can run my dev env in a VM.
I’m an advocate for privacy and security, but I’m also at the “config once, mostly work for a while” camp… I don’t like spending a ton of time fixing things. I don’t need Whonix or QubesOS-level compartmentalization (unless it runs Barbone’s now), but I tried OpenSuse Tumbleweed on a recommendation and the fine-tuning of flatpak controls seemed really nice. I’d love to be able to sandbox as much as possible without breaking things. Memory and exploit-hardened kernel/apps is a huge plus. Basically GrapheneOS as a Linux distro would be fantastic, even though it comes with its own issues.
Am I overthinking here? Should I commit to Debian, Fedora, or OpenSuse and learn to sandbox and harden properly (if so which has best docs and community)?
I forgot the copy-paste specs my laptop hardware info to my phone earlier, but its an HP Victus 15-fa0032dx
HP Victus 15.6" 144Hz FHD IPS Gaming Laptop (Intel i7-12650H 10-Core, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD, RTX 3050 Ti 4GB GDDR6), Backlit KYB, WiFi 6, BT 5.2, HD Webcam
I don’t use the Bluetooth or webcam, so those drivers aren’t necessary. Does Wayland work for this, and is that really necessary?
Sorry for the noob questions. Mid-30s guy with kids wanting to get this done this week if possible. Please excuse spelling and grammar mistakes.
SIDE NOTE: NOT AT ALL opposed to learning new systems, especially for security, as long as it doesn’t require hunting down obscure undocumented commands.
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it seems things haven’t changed much in the last decade as far as hardening is concerned, seems like you have to come from an infosec background and constantly read log files or set up new yara rules (or have some software do it which comes with its own set of concerns). I was recently under the impression that docker images were virtualized until I learned they’re free to break out at any time with kernel vulnerabilities which are much more numerous than hypervisor escapes, so it doesn’t surprise me there are issues with flatpaks/bubblewrap/firejail. Sandboxing solutions seem much more mature on Windows unfortunately, with both Sandboxie/Windows Sandbox and Kaspersky (I know) having their own versions of scope-specific apps and limits. But I think I have a lot more reading to do before assuming.
The situation is improving, just very slowly. Solutions are slowly being figured out to various usability issues created by sandboxing (for example, there has been discussion for a while regarding how to solve the game controller issue I mentioned), which will allow the more user-friendly solutions to be more hardened by default.
Also, even though I have many issues with Flatpak, with a bit of configuration (even graphically with Flatseal) it can effectively sandbox many programs already, as long as you use Wayland.
On the MAC front, there is a 3rd party project (apparmor.d) that’s trying to build a portable set of AppArmor profiles for all common programs/environments on desktop Linux. As you might imagine this is a huge project and far from done, but it’s actually surprisingly complete already.
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Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it seems things haven’t changed much in the last decade as far as hardening is concerned, seems like you have to come from an infosec background and constantly read log files or set up new yara rules (or have some software do it which comes with its own set of concerns). I was recently under the impression that docker images were virtualized until I learned they’re free to break out at any time with kernel vulnerabilities which are much more numerous than hypervisor escapes, so it doesn’t surprise me there are issues with flatpaks/bubblewrap/firejail. Sandboxing solutions seem much more mature on Windows unfortunately, with both Sandboxie/Windows Sandbox and Kaspersky (I know) having their own versions of scope-specific apps and limits. But I think I have a lot more reading to do before assuming.
The situation is improving, just very slowly. Solutions are slowly being figured out to various usability issues created by sandboxing (for example, there has been discussion for a while regarding how to solve the game controller issue I mentioned), which will allow the more user-friendly solutions to be more hardened by default. Also, even though I have many issues with Flatpak, with a bit of configuration (even graphically with Flatseal) it can effectively sandbox many programs already, as long as you use Wayland.
On the MAC front, there is a 3rd party project (apparmor.d) that’s trying to build a portable set of AppArmor profiles for all common programs/environments on desktop Linux. As you might imagine this is a huge project and far from done, but it’s actually surprisingly complete already.