On Tuesday, 19 December 2017 16:33:49 CET Unman wrote: > Tom > > Ive suggested before that if you give this advice you should > clearly state the consequences.
Ok, no worries. Here you go: The consequences is that the template, which has no personal or identifying information, can be used to run apps that make outbound connections. Don’t worrry! No inbound connections are possible. In short; * There is no possibility of loss of private data (since there is none). * There is no possibility of a remote hacking attack (b/c no listening services). * There is no possibility of a hacker installing bad software in your template (only you can do that). Bottom line is that there is no additional risk when a user uses a corporate firewall and a http proxy to allow him to download updates. Unman, being paranoid is fine, but making users unable to update their system unless they do it the very complicated way you approve of will not help security. We are dealing with people, lets keep that in mind. Specifically, the result of being too strict on this is that they will end up either not updating (and missing security updates) or maybe just giving up and using the simple route of throwing security out the window and just getting the job done. Perfection is the enemy of good enough. And since I’m being nasty today, lets focus on another illusion in this email. You wrote; > sys-net will not enforce a firewall Basically true, sys-net indeed bypasses sys-firewall. But you are mistaken if you think that sys-firewall adds security. Sys-firewall adds the _option_ of allowing you to _manually_ add security. IF you have the know-how on how to do so. Which most people don’t. sys-firewall allows you to block remote hosts by IP-address, manually. And optionally. Making people believe that having sys-firewall makes them more secure is selling an illusion of security, which is really bad for actual security because it follows that people will believe they are magically secured. In reality the configuration of the firewall is a highly specialized and low- level task that most people without sys-admin-training will simply not do. Security is not about following a rulebook, it is about people first and foremost. Lets not lose focus of that, please. -- Tom Zander Blog: https://zander.github.io Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to qubes-users@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/2682772.EKl5eY0fiO%40strawberry. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
