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Which Desktop / Window Manager is most secure?
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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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You really should press Ctrl+alt+f3 on your lock screen and get your mind blown.
That leaves the desktop running in a parallel session
I think you missed the point. Switch the tty to realize your de is irrelevant in regards to security, because you don't even need one...
Wait until you want to watch a video, look at a photo, play a game or view a PDF lol
You can do all these things on a framebuffer. Ok, maybe the game thing is a bit of a hassle, but the other stuff is totally doable.
What the duck has this to do with anything.
The entire point is that your DE has NO security features at all, those come ALL from the underlying system such as PAM for example, managing the authentication and such.
These stupid strawmans "huhr dur watch a video"
Besides that I'll just answer the straw man argument anyway because it's even stupid if you take it seriously YES YOU CAN ACTUALLY LAUNCH GUI (such as a game) DIRECTLY FROM TTY.
And I quote
a DE gives no security features that give your system additional security, yes. indeed, a running DE makesbyour system less secure, in some sense. but exactly here you can have less and more secure DEs, and some DEs have security features that make the DE itself more secure than other DEs.
Learned something, thanks
I would love to only use the computer in tty but would be hard to edit images in GIMP. Or do you still launch GUI apps directly from tty? Most websites are an abomination viewed through lynx or similar.
What the duck has this to do with anything.
The entire point is that your DE has NO security features at all, those come ALL from the underlying system such as PAM for example, managing the authentication and such.
These stupid strawmans "huhr dur watch a video"
Besides that I'll just answer the straw man argument anyway because it's even stupid if you take it seriously YES YOU DO ACTUALLY LAUNCH GUI DIRECTLY FROM TTY.
Sorry I don't understand what this means. I am not a computer whiz but just like the simplicity of typing things versus navigating menus.
i don't really get what people mean when they say this...
when you get tty you still get no access, you need to log in as always. a DE/wm/any x11 session/a wayland session (even though wayland is more secure probs?) should pretty much always be less secure, as depending on what state it is in, what features it has, or what happens when certsin components crash somehow, you can more easily "hack" your way in that way than via doing a "ctrl+alt+F-key". so i don't get the whole "get tour mind blown" thing there, i have heard it multiple times.
or am i missing something?
Yeah you're missing the point that the mind blown is just ironic.
The entire point here was to demonstrate that the "security" features of these DEs are not implemented by the DE but by the underlying components such as PAM, and you can just ignore the DE until you have the basics fixed.
What's the point in having a super duper secure login screen if I can bypass it by booting from a USB stick for example.
reading your comments, you like to say that someone has "missed the point".
well, my point is, you should not ignore the DE. i mean, you can, if you can bypass the login as is, sure. but from a user perspective, you should not ignore it, because the DE is a potential security risk. e.g. if your screen lock crashes and whatnot.
sure, yes indeed, your DE can be as secure as you want and it doesn't matter if your underlying system is not secure. and yes indeed, with any non-encrypted drive, you can just mount the drives on another system (e.g. boot the computer from a USB drive). that almost goes without saying imo, and of course that's why an encrypted drive is recommended.
the question is, how easy is it to get to the stuff with an encrypted drive when the system is booted and the encrypted drive(s) is (are) mounted? it is not that easy. and there, the quality of your screen lock setup is the biggest risk factor, usually. if you can crash your DE/WM somehow, if it is not setup right with your display manager or something, then you might be able to get into a login (and interactive) shell of that user (maybe because it is the parent process of your WM that you started with
startx).if you "allow" your potential attacker to reboot from a usb stick, then it is obvious that your DE doesn't matter at all pretty much.
Well especially if the previous comment asked "or am I missing something".
Obviously I could be wrong that's why I said I THINK
the "missing something" was with regards to what i said about ctrl+alt+F-something not giving some extra attack point. missing something that would blow my mind. if you say the mind blowing is ironic or whtever then it doesn't matter anyway.