No.1722
How do you manage computer security in your devices?
I feel that just common sense isn't enough nowadays, because of several reasons:
- Browsers especially (even if you disable JavaScript, which is often not feasible in many sites), but also email clients, torrent clients... can all be exploited somewhat easily.
- Some games require kernel-level anti-cheats, which have complete access to your computer. Even if you trust the developer, these kernel drivers are often buggy and can be leveraged by malware.
- Legitimate programs or Steam games might receive malicious updates if the developer or their supply chain is compromised.
- If you use third-party dependencies for development, you might also be compromised if any of them (or their recursive dependencies) are malicious, not uncommon in ecosystems like npm.
- If you play doujin games or eroge, you often have to download them from random untrusted sources.
I've concluded that it's not really possible to trust a computer if you use it for activities like these.
I'm thinking about getting a second device only for sensitive stuff, like banking, shopping and managing passwords. It seems a bit of a hassle, but I can't think of any other way.
No.1724
>>1722i think you're being overly paranoid
also, dunno what your bank is like but it has been i think a industry norm for like 15 years to require MFA for basically every action you take
anyway, if you really that concerned you could look into getting a hardware token instead of a brand new device, or virtualization/sandboxing
No.1725
Even if you use trusted and expensive services you can still get super fucked if the someone up the chain pushed out a bad update, such as what happened to microsoft a few months ago with their security provider.
The only way to be completely safe is to physically isolate your hardware. Cant get a virus if it cant connect to you. Doujin and ero games are stuff I put onto my old laptop which is more convenient to sit in bed and play, and if something goes wrong with my dolphin porn I'm not losing much. It's also a good idea to get your "illicit goods" from trusted sources. A lot of this can be avoided with just paying attention to where the link goes.
No.1727
>>1726This,
OP and anyone who is interested in securing their electronic devices should define their own threat model before implementing solutions.
Anyway, most people only want to be safe from cybercriminals and this advice is probably the most important. If I wanted to add one more specific, I'd recommend to create a separate account for administration tasks (done by default on most Linux distributions but not on Windows).
No.1730
>>1722Backup your files in case of ransomware.
Don't reuse passwords.
Having a USB containing a small OS that loads into RAM and doesn't touch your HDD could work, like Puppy Linux or Slax.
There are small things you can do that don't necessarily fall under "don't click on weird stuff".
No.1731
I don't keep any passwords on my device, after I got a virus that pulled all mine from Firefox's password cache.
Don't let your browser remember passwords, it's stored basically in plaintext as far as viruses are concerned.