this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2021
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[TINY GUIDE] How to stay safe from Pegasus and most social engineering malware these days (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/74540

Hello! I think it is a nice time to re-mention some 101 tips of IT security for folks here, that I also practice. Pegasus malware investigation will be big news for a good while, so the more awareness it helps spread, the better.

RULE 1

DO NOT CLICK ON RANDOM SMS AND EMAIL LINKS. Please, do not do this, ever. Just do not do it. Do not do it. Do not do it. Do not do it.

Yes, that is how many times I repeated that line. That is how important this rule is.

Also, do not download random email attachments.

Phishing is such a common tactic that one would think this problem has been solved by now, but it has not.

RULE 2

Keep OFF auto download of photos, videos, documents and so on on WhatsApp, Signal and such apps.

Drive by downloads being self executable surprise bombs is not a new thing. Basically, this rule is similar to keeping off AutoPlay for external USB sticks on Windows computers.

RULE 3

Avoid using popular software too much.

I get it, this is a hard rule to workaround considering how much we need to use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and so on, so it is a lot better to compartmentalise your activities among multiple messengers.

Pegasus and a lot of specialised malware uses zero-days to be able to design zero click deployment tricks, which is what these government surveillance tools are good at reserving. They use their millions of dollars of funding and R&D properly, so you have to be careful.

As an example, try to keep WhatsApp internet turned off most of the times via NetGuard, and turn it on only when needed, a good method I have earlier suggested as well in my smartphone hardening guide.

CONCLUSION

Those were some thoughts on the top of my head, before I go to sleep. Stay safe against surveillance! And feel free to ask whatever you want to!

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

Seeing this post again made me think, apart from my previous reply, about something else.

I think your "popularity of software" argument is great because it probably holds true, in that an investment in finding an exploit has larger returns if the exploitable software is widely used. But rather than thinking in terms of apps, we could think in terms of operating systems. What if the vector of infection is not an app and rather is an OS? This is perfectly possible and there are massive incentives to find such exploits since this is not app-dependent.

This means that merely using iOS or Android in any capacity (either through Lineage OS or perhaps even Replicant) could be enough for infection. And so far, not knowing what the vectors of infection are for Pegasus, this is perfectly possible.

Perhaps using Linux OS is a good idea, given it's not as popular.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago

Yes, I agree, but Android is sufficiently secure as Google has incentives (now even more with grifter Apple blocking others' spying to allow just theirs) to make more and more users get trapped in Google's ecosystem, plus the development is open source, due to which zero days are extremely costlier to find on Android than for iOS: https://www.wired.com/story/android-zero-day-more-than-ios-zerodium/. This also shows us closed source obscure security model failed with Apple, and even for Windows.

Also, Android is a lot easier to be able to exercise control on and lockdown, and use trusted FOSS software on.

Moreover, if you are doing mission critical work like dissent, journalism, whistleblowing and so on, phones should exclusively be used as communication tools and to click photos and so on. I have covered this in my Activist and Protestors Handbook: https://lemmy.ml/post/34220

One should definitely try and use Linux based distribution, tweaked for your own security needs, for as much work as possible in such cases.

I am having trouble with creating my Linux Hardening Guide currently, which I definitely want to try completing in its entirety like I did the Smartphone Hardening Guide. This is essential because no such guide for Linux exists that is as easy, digestible and considers a lot of things that all current guides lack. And I definitely would love to intertwine it with a new version of the Activists and Protestors Handbook.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Also make sure to power down your devices regularly as to flush the temporary memory (provided the hard drive is not infected)

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Malware usually does not sit in RAM, but internal storage. What you are suggesting is likely runtime or unpacking code style attacks. Those are different, and protection against them is easier as user has to manually install and run such apps on Android.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

One of the articles about it (I think from The Guardian) said that it can run in RAM which was one thing making it harder to detect. It said that it was present until a reboot.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

It is a common practice that if your phone has been left unattended and is out of your sight and is within reach of suspicious or legal criminal authorities, when you return, restart it. I thought it would be clear to people.

It would be better to rephrase my statement as nothing persisting in RAM if you turn off its power or the device that has RAM.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

If Pegasus required physical access to your device that would be relevant. However, it's installed through several other means and according to articles I've read can live in RAM. So restarting regularly despite never having an unattended device seems prudent.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Code cannot persist in RAM and survive power loss. The only way that is possible for RAM to have that code persistently is that the code is stored on disk storage, and the code gets copied over to RAM upon each reboot.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

No one is arguing that RAM is persistent after reboots..

@yxzi 's original comment suggested regularly restarting your device, which coincincides with the assessment that Pegasus can live in RAM. I see it as nothing but great advice and I can't figure out why it illicited your responce in a post created by you about "staying safe from Pegasus."

edit: a few letters

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 years ago

Pegasus does not live in RAM. Pegasus is copied from disk storage to RAM each time, so it cannot be persistent by design of RAM. If Pegasus is getting detected into your RAM, there are bigger problems than a mere restart of your device.

My post is not making me respond because I want to argue needlessly, but because the problem might be more severe. A restart of phone after your phone has been out of sight is a good measure, but if after repeated restarts it is found there, that is what I was pointing out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Use a dumbphone instead

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

lets use a sword to cut a tomato

Nope.

Also, dumbphones are worse because you have zero controls over the OS running on top of it, and proposing people to use a Nokia 1100 in 2021 does not exactly help anyone take you seriously.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

I'm using a dumbphone normally and it works for me.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago

It does not for everyone. Everyone has different needs, and 2G phase out is becoming more common than you think. Even 3G is going out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

What type of phone do you use as your daily driver? iPhone? Android?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago

Android. You can check my smartphone guide pinned at [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

It might be a good idea for journalists and other targeted people to have multiple burner phones for different activities.

That way if your personal device is infected itnisnkess likely to compromise your human rights work.

You would probably want to turn off any phone you are not using as they are able to access the camera and mic.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Camera and mic access is not hard to prevent as long as the device is not infected. Avoiding infection not hard itself either, if the user or activist has a good grasp of 101 rules.

This is a reason I try to make guides like this, so my stuff can be a good reference for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

It seems to me like your rules might protect me from known threats (or not). But I don't think it is easy to protect against unknown threats. At least when the advice is not using popular technologies and people like journalists necessarily need to use popular communication technologies. Also they may not be able to explain everyone of their contacts that they can't open any links or documents.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Using sandboxed VMs in computers is an excellent way to open links if one is so endangered. VMs can be created infinitely, and you can save snapshots for VMs as well. Moreover, there is always the good old TailsOS USB that runs on RAM, and nothing can infect RAM permanently.

Now if they choose to use phones to open all kinds of links, that is on them. Phones are vulnerable technology, so they should be used as temporary communication tools and not as mini computer portals for now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

I agree vut I think you missed my point. You said it's easy and I disagree with that. It may be a simple concept but it's definitely more work on an everyday basis and you need to spend a significant amount of time and effort on learning and preparing all of that. These are significant barriers.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago

The most you can do against the unknown threat is take a whitelisting approach in life, unless you have a crystal ball that shows future. And that is how I laid out the rules. Not clicking random links, not downloading random files and not using common software is as far as you can go, and only the last one is considerably hard.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

101 tips and you only mentioned 3!!

:)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

That's written in base root 2.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 years ago

You cheeky little math freak

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 years ago

T_T sorry