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On 01/18/17 13:06, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> Hi:
> 
> Joanna and I had a quick back-and-forth about this article today:
> https://textslashplain.com/2017/01/14/the-line-of-death/
> 
> Pic-within-a-pic attack was mentioned, and I was wondering if we can do
> more to prevent spear-attacks aimed at Qubes users. I'm willing to bet
> your trusted work terminal looks exactly like this [1] (except my added
> bash powerline bits). Most people won't rename it from [work] to
> something else (partly for ease of copying files between VMs, partly out
> of inertia), so I'm willing to bet most of you would have a blue frame
> with the title "[work] user@work:~".
> 
> What if each login session generated a short random text label displayed
> prominently as part of XFCE top bar UI, to act as your "session UI
> fingerprint," like "<XoaZ>" for the sake of example. Then the window
> decoration title would be:
> 
> <XoaZ>:[work] user@work:~
> 
> Identifying pic-within-a-pic attacks would be easier by quickly checking
> if the random string in the window title matches the string displayed in
> the XFCE ui (our "trusted pixels").
> 
> Just a thought for your consideration -- I have no idea how much work
> this would be. :)
> 
> .. [1] http://imgur.com/a/7Fzd0
> 

Solutions to this problem are already implemented in Qubes, and they are
described here:

https://www.qubes-os.org/getting-started/#running-an-application-full-screen

Are these solutions deficient? If so, in what specific way(s)? What does
the proposed visual string comparison solution get us that the existing
ones don't? Personally, I find it much easier just to drag a window or
hit alt + tab than to visually compare anything. There's a lot of room for
improvement, but I think that any new solutions should aim to make protecting
against UI attacks easier for the user than it currently is, not harder.

- -- 
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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