multiple boot modes for better security: persistent user | live user | persistent secureadmin | persistent superadmin | persistent recovery mode

admin is best IMO unless it can conflict with some other program out there(?)

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There is a group adm.

May not be a good idea to use adm as a user name? standard user accounts - uucp,gopher,adm, nobody... - what are they, why are they there, when shall they be used? - Red Hat Customer Portal lists user adm for nologin. That could potentially cause some issues. (Even if not a Debian thing I like to keep things potentially open to be ported by someone to another Linux distribution.)

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Talking about VMs here…

Under the The Separate User "admin" Plan. (grub boot menu to login into user user or user admin):

  • Could we even go for autologin in X and virtual console for user user when booting into user-only (non-root) mode?
    • In this mode, user admin stays password locked by default.
  • Could we even go for autologin in X and virtual console for user admin when booting into superuser mode?
    • In this mode, user user stays password locked by default.
  • Could we even go for passwordless sudo for user admin when booting into superuser mode?
  • All passwords locked by default.
  • No more default passwords for user user and no default password for user admin.
  • Still no root login.

implementation goals:
secure auto login + secure passwordless sudo + uncrackable user passwords

By using locked passwords by default, there wouldn’t be any passwords that adversaries could crack.

Could the use of autologin be abused by non-autologin, limited user accounts such as user web? Could for example a compromised linux user account web take advantage of user user being autologin? I wouldn’t know. Maybe different for graphical applications running under a different user account? But then probably X is too broken to consider this anyhow.

Would an auto logged in virtual console offer any attack surface for compromised non-user user accounts such as user web?

Users will always be able to configure what they want. (Such as the current behavior of only user user and ability to use sudo.) In this post I am trying to find a design for the default which works good enough for most users.

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admin. adm is already a group and would likely cause conflicts. admin may be too generic though and might also cause conflicts. Maybe “sysadmin”?

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Also wondering what the right package (or package name) for this would be. It interacts with grub-live, maybe apparmor-profile-everything (superroot) and is Kicksecure / Whonix specific (?).

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Grub default boot menu entries:

  • PERSISTENT mode USER (For daily activities.)
  • LIVE mode USER (For daily activities.)
  • PERSISTENT mode ADMIN (For software installation.)
  • PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN (Be very cautious!)
  • Recovery PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN (Be very cautious!)

Boot modes considered too unimportant to be added to grub default boot menu:

  • LIVE mode ADMIN
  • LIVE mode SUPERADMIN
  • Recovery LIVE mode SUPERADMIN

I don’t see good use cases for these. But could be convinced otherwise with user feedback.

If anyone cares about these, there could be files in /etc/grub.d/ folder that add such entries but these files could be non-executable by default. Thereby update-grub would ignore them. To opt-in into such modes, users could just run sudo chmod +x /etc/grub.d/somenumber_name-of-boot-mode.

Also users who really want something special/custom would be able to add whatever they want to /etc/grub.d/ folder / grub boot menu.

Also by using grub boot menu editing (key e) at grub boot menu, kernel parameters can be adjusted and any combination would be possible.


Use cases for the different modes:

  • PERSISTENT mode USER (For daily activities.): Useful for browsing, e-mail, chat, etc. or just letting an already set up and installed server run. Even upgrading through upgrade-nonroot.
  • LIVE mode USER (For daily activities.): Same as above but without persistence.
  • PERSISTENT mode ADMIN (For software installation.): users could run sudo apt install whatever-software-package, then reboot into USER. Editing /etc/apt/sources.list.d among many other things prohibited for better security.
  • PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN (Be very cautious!): users could add foreign sources to /etc/apt/sources.list.d or do anything (full freedom), then (optional but advisable) reboot to ADMIN mode, install packages from third party repositories.
  • Recovery PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN (Be very cautious!): The usual recovery mode.

Anti-opposition / “I want the old Whonix back”:

Users who don’t like (any, multiple or all) of the new options…

  • PERSISTENT mode USER (For daily activities.) [A]
  • LIVE mode USER (For daily activities.) [B]
  • PERSISTENT mode ADMIN (For software installation.) [C]

and who want “the old Whonix” “with unrestricted sudo” (PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN) back, who don’t want to see any of the new options [A], [B], [C]… These could just make these /etc/grub.d folder / grub menu entries gone by running sudo chmod -x /etc/grub.d/somenumber_name-of-boot-mode. (There could be a script to simplify that.)

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I will use the following file names.

/etc/grub.d/10_linux                         PERSISTENT mode USER
/etc/grub.d/11_linux_live                    LIVE mode USER
/etc/grub.d/12_linux_admin                   PERSISTENT mode ADMIN
/etc/grub.d/13_linux_admin_live              LIVE mode ADMIN
/etc/grub.d/14_linux_superadmin              PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN
/etc/grub.d/15_linux_superadmin_live         LIVE mode SUPERADMIN
/etc/grub.d/16_linux_recovery_mode           PERSISTENT mode SUPERADMIN
/etc/grub.d/17_linux_recovery_mode_live      Recovery LIVE mode SUPERADMIN

Should stay below /etc/grub.d/20_ because that is already used by an existing script.

Note: some files will not be created in the first iteration (and not sure ever) - those listed in chapter Boot modes considered too unimportant to be added to grub default boot menu: in my post above.

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These grub default menu entries were implemented.

Next step, things that need to be implemented:

  • when kernel parameter rootmode is set → boot/login into user admin
  • when kernel parameter superroot is set → boot/login into user admin
  • otherwise boot/login into user user
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I will add a safety feature. Copy /boot/grub/grub.cfg to a temporary location, then use /usr/bin/grub-script-check to check the temporary file is valid before actually installing it to real location /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

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“boot into user”, “boot into admin” and “boot into superadmin” should probably be all separate users. (user, admin, superadmin)

Also need to get the terminology right superadmin vs superroot. I guess when booting it will be user superadmin which is a limited user which can use unrestricted sudo which we will then call superroot.

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I am wondering if when booting into admin or superadmin mode, if as few services as possible should be load. That is because when for example a compromised web server is running under a limited user, user admin or superadmin is more in danger as if no such services were started. Ideally no malware running under limited user accounts would be running during maintenance, admin and superadmin mode. That could be too difficult. Can be future work. Might be hard to whitelist which services should run (Tor, debian-tor, …) vs which ones should not. Also when booting into admin mode to install lets say a web server then the admin might want to fully set it up which wouldn’t work if service starting was restricted. Perhaps it is possible to use no-autostart at boot but regular autostart after package installation.

From SUID Disabler and Permission Hardener - #55 by Patrick

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Maybe add another boot mode with most services disabled? Doing it as the default might annoy some users.

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I guess with 5 boot modes (as per this post) we already found an “ideal” number of boot modes. It’s already pushing it. 3 different security levels (user, admin, superadmin), live and recovery mode. Splitting up these security levels is always possible in theory by concept but I guess will confuse users too much. We will have the most sophisticated security focused boot menu.

Splitting boot into admin mode into services enabled and services whitelist only… Probably not.

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Sure, it might be a lot but I don’t see how else we can do this without annoying users.

Sounds like an achievement.

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If he is the (super)admin then he should be able to start the service himself.

What can you do with admin mode that requires root. Only upgrade packages?

Does not really show a difference in the description between admin and superadmin mode. Both say “for software installation” but when should you choose admin or superadmin?

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Any ordinary administration tasks e.g. editing config files.

Admin is still restricted under the default apparmor policy. Superadmin (or superroot) has its own, more permissive policy.

Currently, it just has access to sysctls and doesn’t include the dangerous-files abstraction.

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I am copying over the conceptual notes to a wiki page and refining the concept. Please check:

What would probably cause chaos is to have sometimes 1 word and sometimes 2 words.

  • root
  • super root

also

  • admin
  • super admin

“But I used root.” “You need super root.” “I mean, I used super root.”

Therefore I think single words should be avoided. Documentation should introduce and consistently use two words. Which ones?

  • limited admin / limited root
  • super root / super root

But limited not sound good. What about “daily admin”? Also not good, because we already say user “user” is for daily activities. The word needs to be more encouraging, positive than “limited” but less exiting than “daily”. What about “normal admin”, “normal root”? Not good because “normal”, the norm, what most do is trusted root by default. Also word “untrusted” in “untrusted admin” seems confusing.

Any better suggestions thans limited admin / limited root?

restricted admin /restricted root ?

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HulaHoop via Whonix Forum:

restricted admin /restricted root ?

Technically correct but sounds so negative, sounds so not worth
bothering with. Maybe there’s no better alternative. Let’s see. Other ideas?