I understand the scenario you are describing to me, and that it’s perfectly plausible. (I do see a potential weakness or two which I’d love to discuss separately). Let me try to clear up the confusion in the current discussion thread. What you are describing is somebody running their own software service. This is possible, I’m not arguing that. My original assertion, is that if you allow somebody else to run the SOFTWARE service for you, you are inherently at their mercy. Based on what you’ve just described, I’m absolutely certain you agree with that assertion. This is also the only reasonable way most of the world would have access to most online services. The idea of everybody hosting their own software stack for every service they would like to use is laughably impractical and implausible.
I think what you are trying to say is that if they have shell access it is insecure and yes I agree with that
But even if they have shell access, as long as I can be assured no one else is logged in, I can make any linux box just as secure in about twelve minutes using the above scenario.
Yes in what I described there are weaknesses such as L1 cache doping to vastly reduce uncertainty making identification of prime stripes in packets trivial, but to practically pull that off you need an electron microscope installed above a naked operating processor meaning the entire room has to be sub zero and sealed from contaminants and prepared days beforehand
Which means that any joe schmo spinning up a digitalocean droplet isn’t going to be hosted on a machine with NSA grade top level memory and CPU observation installed
I was more thinking that, in theory, anything you install and run could be compromised from the get go. With enough prep, any distro could be replaced with a compromised version on the fly and you would have no way to tell. Any tools you use could similarly be compromised to give you untrustworthy output. It would require a heck of a lot of investment, but not beyond the scale of nation states, and would be pretty scalable.
If you are running an ‘illegal’ service, why not host it on a virally distributed botnet and embrace the chaos and mistrust in your host systems? Might be the best way to detach from anyhing physical with a fixed location that causes traceable bills.
I understand the scenario you are describing to me, and that it’s perfectly plausible. (I do see a potential weakness or two which I’d love to discuss separately). Let me try to clear up the confusion in the current discussion thread. What you are describing is somebody running their own software service. This is possible, I’m not arguing that. My original assertion, is that if you allow somebody else to run the SOFTWARE service for you, you are inherently at their mercy. Based on what you’ve just described, I’m absolutely certain you agree with that assertion. This is also the only reasonable way most of the world would have access to most online services. The idea of everybody hosting their own software stack for every service they would like to use is laughably impractical and implausible.
I think what you are trying to say is that if they have shell access it is insecure and yes I agree with that
But even if they have shell access, as long as I can be assured no one else is logged in, I can make any linux box just as secure in about twelve minutes using the above scenario.
Yes in what I described there are weaknesses such as L1 cache doping to vastly reduce uncertainty making identification of prime stripes in packets trivial, but to practically pull that off you need an electron microscope installed above a naked operating processor meaning the entire room has to be sub zero and sealed from contaminants and prepared days beforehand
Which means that any joe schmo spinning up a digitalocean droplet isn’t going to be hosted on a machine with NSA grade top level memory and CPU observation installed
I was more thinking that, in theory, anything you install and run could be compromised from the get go. With enough prep, any distro could be replaced with a compromised version on the fly and you would have no way to tell. Any tools you use could similarly be compromised to give you untrustworthy output. It would require a heck of a lot of investment, but not beyond the scale of nation states, and would be pretty scalable.
If you are running an ‘illegal’ service, why not host it on a virally distributed botnet and embrace the chaos and mistrust in your host systems? Might be the best way to detach from anyhing physical with a fixed location that causes traceable bills.