▲ 886 ▼ Microsoft admits Windows 11 has a GDID tracker with no off switch, first documented publicly in an FBI hacker complaint (www.windowslatest.com) submitted 4 months ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world 201 comments fedilink hide all child comments
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 163 points 4 months ago (49 children) There's a very easy trick to defeat this: use Linux. permalink fedilink source hideshow 49 child comments replies: [+] bloogoose@lemmy.zip 97 points 4 months ago (10 children) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 10 child comments replies: [–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 25 points 4 months ago (3 children) I talked with the women i'm working with where we print our price lists about changing from adobe to something else and she told me it would be a bad idea since it would make both of our work much more buggy and time consuming with more chances of the end result being worse. So i'll keep using indesing and the adobe suite for now but i did switch from sketchup to blender for 3D modeling and it's a bit challenging and more messy then i'm used to but i get better rendering results from what i tried so far. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago (2 children) As long as you can export to the same format, it shouldn't matter from the print shop's perspective, no? They just see the same file they would've always seen. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) The way we work together is by exchanging full fresh indesing pakages that contain the main indd, the idml, a pdf, the links folder and the fonts folder so that we always have everything we need. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago Sorry if this is a dumb question, I don't know anything about graphics design, just about the technology behind it. Why do you send all these things as separate files? Is just a rasterised or vector export of the project not enough? Sounds like the design world really needs a standardised container format that can contain all these separate things otherwise. permalink fedilink source parent [–] M137@lemmy.today 15 points 4 months ago (1 child) So many issues with the world boils down to that last part, people refusing to change and learn. I never understood it, I've always loved change and learning. I've seen so many people go from having that same openness to only caring about keeping everything the same and never learning, it's really disturbing. Some are like that from a very early age, others fall into it at any other part of their lives and it's never a good thing IMO. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago For me, I've got a million interests. I could change and learn this one thing, but that would take time away from learning about other, more personally interesting things. permalink fedilink source parent [–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 months ago* (2 children) Even worse! Admitting that I was not always doing the most sensible thing, at all times! That I was actually doing really stupid things, for a long time! I ... I can't make mistakes... no ... reality is wrong! permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [+] bloogoose@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago Yes, I'm trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that. permalink fedilink source parent [–] wioum@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago At some point you just have to leave the software behind. That time is now! permalink fedilink source parent [–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 4 months ago (33 children) If your system uses systemd, it has an etc/machine-id, which is used for a lot of different things. And changing it will break a lot of stuff, probably until you reboot. I guess you could write something to randomly shuffle it every time you reboot? But it is the go-to way for lots of programs (including browsers) to identify themselves. Which means (unless you have done the work to scramble your machine ID) you can be tracked on Linux as well. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 33 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 53 points 4 months ago (20 children) The difference is that Linux isn't sending telemetry to some central entity associating that ID to an IP. Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page. Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account. This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? Fucking gross. And if you know of anything on Linux exposing/transmitting the machine-id, please do let everyone know because nothing should. Anything that does should be considered malware. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 20 child comments replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 months ago (4 children) It's not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-windows-driver-to-now-collect-user-telemetry-data-like-website-categories-by-default/ permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 30 points 4 months ago (1 child) It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. ..on Windows. if you explicitly install their malware and agree to data sharing. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago* I should have clarified, but yes it's the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it's hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don't collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won't have to worry about these things. Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it's fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It's not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools. permalink fedilink source parent [–] inari@piefed.zip 19 points 4 months ago (1 child) That's wild. Shit like this makes me distrust proprietary drivers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] can@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago I distrust proprietary anything at this point permalink fedilink source parent [–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 6 points 4 months ago i think i remember hearing the dbus machine-id being read by google chrome on linux. it could be used for privacy violation with proprietary software, though i personally consider linux machines with chrome or equivalent software installed compromised. permalink fedilink source parent [–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? My interpretation was that they had an IP that they suspected was the perp's home network, and subpoena'd some major platforms to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt. Given the perp's sloppiness in using the same machine for both personal and illicit computing activities, they could even have some network traffic in the capture to indicate which platforms they should subpoena Or if we want to be more conspiracy-minded, maybe they installed a trojan on his computer and this is the parallel evidence trail that law enforcement created so they don't have to admit to hacking the hackers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago Or he used Edge, so Microsoft just has all his browsing data. permalink fedilink source parent [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (11 children) Another user said they think machine-id is readable by the browser. This is absolutely true, machine-id is working as described when it is read by any web browser. So Linux isn’t sending your unique id to a central entity that can associate it with your ip, it’s sending your unique id to any entity you browse to that can then associate it with your ip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 11 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) If you're really worried about that, just change it every time you boot or something. There's a kernel parameter to change it. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (6 children) It's intended to be read by applications on the system. That's like its whole purpose. If you know of any browsers sending it or otherwise making it available without hashing it with an application key first, that would be a problem. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (5 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 5 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 19 points 4 months ago (10 children) also there's the TPM chip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 10 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children) Upvoting both comments for awareness, since Linux is the first of a multi-step process, not a privacy panacea. But we must be clear that in both theory and practice there’s little comparison between systemd and modern Windows machine-user association. Someone using Windows regularly has a gaping wound, is actively bleeding out. Switching to Linux is just a tourniquet, but every other treatment is at best no-effect until that tourniquet is applied. E: transpose systemd/Windows for clarity permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 8 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 5 points 4 months ago (7 children) Also as a life long programmer, I have this feeling it is possible to just go in and make some changes so I can have the system just make shit up about the TPM while indeed also doing the equivalent of having system-d decide to respond with random bullshit. Don't even need to be a programmer, just find a community of them that you trust that distribute their own "fixes". Definitely not doing that with anything else because its both hidden in compilation and buried like herpes across multiple components. Probably/hopefully not directly related but I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 7 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 months ago (6 children) And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct. To the inquisitor:any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose). Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall. I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent [–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago Yeah, motherboard-level tracking is scary because even the OS won’t be able to detect it. The truly paranoid people (and security researchers) go as far as desoldering chips to ensure nothing phones home. permalink fedilink source parent [–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago Where in the source does Firefox expose machine-id to websites? With a quick grep I'm only seeing it around audio? permalink fedilink source parent [–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago If that hacker only knew about tracking by Windows... permalink fedilink source parent [–] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 3 months ago (2 children) I wouldn't call overhauling your entire operating system, including finding alternatives to software you use daily, making sure your hardware is compatible and relearning your entire work method as an "easy trick". permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 points 3 months ago In any other context I'd agree with you, but hacking is the one context where you really do want to do things the hard way. Use ephemeral VMs with passwords only saved in your head, have a dedicated machine for your illegal activities to help isolate your real identity from your hacking. Honestly even if you're just doing HackTheBox and similar best practice is to spin up a Kali VM and only use that VM for the activity since you're literally connecting to a network with a bunch of hackers, even though what you're doing is entirely above the board permalink fedilink source parent [–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago I think you might actually be surprised... permalink fedilink source parent
[+] bloogoose@lemmy.zip 97 points 4 months ago (10 children) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 10 child comments replies: [–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 25 points 4 months ago (3 children) I talked with the women i'm working with where we print our price lists about changing from adobe to something else and she told me it would be a bad idea since it would make both of our work much more buggy and time consuming with more chances of the end result being worse. So i'll keep using indesing and the adobe suite for now but i did switch from sketchup to blender for 3D modeling and it's a bit challenging and more messy then i'm used to but i get better rendering results from what i tried so far. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago (2 children) As long as you can export to the same format, it shouldn't matter from the print shop's perspective, no? They just see the same file they would've always seen. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) The way we work together is by exchanging full fresh indesing pakages that contain the main indd, the idml, a pdf, the links folder and the fonts folder so that we always have everything we need. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago Sorry if this is a dumb question, I don't know anything about graphics design, just about the technology behind it. Why do you send all these things as separate files? Is just a rasterised or vector export of the project not enough? Sounds like the design world really needs a standardised container format that can contain all these separate things otherwise. permalink fedilink source parent [–] M137@lemmy.today 15 points 4 months ago (1 child) So many issues with the world boils down to that last part, people refusing to change and learn. I never understood it, I've always loved change and learning. I've seen so many people go from having that same openness to only caring about keeping everything the same and never learning, it's really disturbing. Some are like that from a very early age, others fall into it at any other part of their lives and it's never a good thing IMO. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago For me, I've got a million interests. I could change and learn this one thing, but that would take time away from learning about other, more personally interesting things. permalink fedilink source parent [–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 months ago* (2 children) Even worse! Admitting that I was not always doing the most sensible thing, at all times! That I was actually doing really stupid things, for a long time! I ... I can't make mistakes... no ... reality is wrong! permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [+] bloogoose@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago Yes, I'm trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that. permalink fedilink source parent [–] wioum@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago At some point you just have to leave the software behind. That time is now! permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 25 points 4 months ago (3 children) I talked with the women i'm working with where we print our price lists about changing from adobe to something else and she told me it would be a bad idea since it would make both of our work much more buggy and time consuming with more chances of the end result being worse. So i'll keep using indesing and the adobe suite for now but i did switch from sketchup to blender for 3D modeling and it's a bit challenging and more messy then i'm used to but i get better rendering results from what i tried so far. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago (2 children) As long as you can export to the same format, it shouldn't matter from the print shop's perspective, no? They just see the same file they would've always seen. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) The way we work together is by exchanging full fresh indesing pakages that contain the main indd, the idml, a pdf, the links folder and the fonts folder so that we always have everything we need. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago Sorry if this is a dumb question, I don't know anything about graphics design, just about the technology behind it. Why do you send all these things as separate files? Is just a rasterised or vector export of the project not enough? Sounds like the design world really needs a standardised container format that can contain all these separate things otherwise. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago (2 children) As long as you can export to the same format, it shouldn't matter from the print shop's perspective, no? They just see the same file they would've always seen. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) The way we work together is by exchanging full fresh indesing pakages that contain the main indd, the idml, a pdf, the links folder and the fonts folder so that we always have everything we need. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago Sorry if this is a dumb question, I don't know anything about graphics design, just about the technology behind it. Why do you send all these things as separate files? Is just a rasterised or vector export of the project not enough? Sounds like the design world really needs a standardised container format that can contain all these separate things otherwise. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) The way we work together is by exchanging full fresh indesing pakages that contain the main indd, the idml, a pdf, the links folder and the fonts folder so that we always have everything we need. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago Sorry if this is a dumb question, I don't know anything about graphics design, just about the technology behind it. Why do you send all these things as separate files? Is just a rasterised or vector export of the project not enough? Sounds like the design world really needs a standardised container format that can contain all these separate things otherwise. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago Sorry if this is a dumb question, I don't know anything about graphics design, just about the technology behind it. Why do you send all these things as separate files? Is just a rasterised or vector export of the project not enough? Sounds like the design world really needs a standardised container format that can contain all these separate things otherwise. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] M137@lemmy.today 15 points 4 months ago (1 child) So many issues with the world boils down to that last part, people refusing to change and learn. I never understood it, I've always loved change and learning. I've seen so many people go from having that same openness to only caring about keeping everything the same and never learning, it's really disturbing. Some are like that from a very early age, others fall into it at any other part of their lives and it's never a good thing IMO. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago For me, I've got a million interests. I could change and learn this one thing, but that would take time away from learning about other, more personally interesting things. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago For me, I've got a million interests. I could change and learn this one thing, but that would take time away from learning about other, more personally interesting things. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 months ago* (2 children) Even worse! Admitting that I was not always doing the most sensible thing, at all times! That I was actually doing really stupid things, for a long time! I ... I can't make mistakes... no ... reality is wrong! permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [+] bloogoose@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago Yes, I'm trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that. permalink fedilink source parent
[+] bloogoose@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) [deleted] permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago Yes, I'm trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago Yes, I'm trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] wioum@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago At some point you just have to leave the software behind. That time is now! permalink fedilink source parent
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 4 months ago (33 children) If your system uses systemd, it has an etc/machine-id, which is used for a lot of different things. And changing it will break a lot of stuff, probably until you reboot. I guess you could write something to randomly shuffle it every time you reboot? But it is the go-to way for lots of programs (including browsers) to identify themselves. Which means (unless you have done the work to scramble your machine ID) you can be tracked on Linux as well. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 33 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 53 points 4 months ago (20 children) The difference is that Linux isn't sending telemetry to some central entity associating that ID to an IP. Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page. Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account. This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? Fucking gross. And if you know of anything on Linux exposing/transmitting the machine-id, please do let everyone know because nothing should. Anything that does should be considered malware. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 20 child comments replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 months ago (4 children) It's not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-windows-driver-to-now-collect-user-telemetry-data-like-website-categories-by-default/ permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 30 points 4 months ago (1 child) It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. ..on Windows. if you explicitly install their malware and agree to data sharing. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago* I should have clarified, but yes it's the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it's hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don't collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won't have to worry about these things. Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it's fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It's not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools. permalink fedilink source parent [–] inari@piefed.zip 19 points 4 months ago (1 child) That's wild. Shit like this makes me distrust proprietary drivers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] can@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago I distrust proprietary anything at this point permalink fedilink source parent [–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 6 points 4 months ago i think i remember hearing the dbus machine-id being read by google chrome on linux. it could be used for privacy violation with proprietary software, though i personally consider linux machines with chrome or equivalent software installed compromised. permalink fedilink source parent [–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? My interpretation was that they had an IP that they suspected was the perp's home network, and subpoena'd some major platforms to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt. Given the perp's sloppiness in using the same machine for both personal and illicit computing activities, they could even have some network traffic in the capture to indicate which platforms they should subpoena Or if we want to be more conspiracy-minded, maybe they installed a trojan on his computer and this is the parallel evidence trail that law enforcement created so they don't have to admit to hacking the hackers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago Or he used Edge, so Microsoft just has all his browsing data. permalink fedilink source parent [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (11 children) Another user said they think machine-id is readable by the browser. This is absolutely true, machine-id is working as described when it is read by any web browser. So Linux isn’t sending your unique id to a central entity that can associate it with your ip, it’s sending your unique id to any entity you browse to that can then associate it with your ip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 11 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) If you're really worried about that, just change it every time you boot or something. There's a kernel parameter to change it. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (6 children) It's intended to be read by applications on the system. That's like its whole purpose. If you know of any browsers sending it or otherwise making it available without hashing it with an application key first, that would be a problem. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (5 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 5 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 19 points 4 months ago (10 children) also there's the TPM chip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 10 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children) Upvoting both comments for awareness, since Linux is the first of a multi-step process, not a privacy panacea. But we must be clear that in both theory and practice there’s little comparison between systemd and modern Windows machine-user association. Someone using Windows regularly has a gaping wound, is actively bleeding out. Switching to Linux is just a tourniquet, but every other treatment is at best no-effect until that tourniquet is applied. E: transpose systemd/Windows for clarity permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 8 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 5 points 4 months ago (7 children) Also as a life long programmer, I have this feeling it is possible to just go in and make some changes so I can have the system just make shit up about the TPM while indeed also doing the equivalent of having system-d decide to respond with random bullshit. Don't even need to be a programmer, just find a community of them that you trust that distribute their own "fixes". Definitely not doing that with anything else because its both hidden in compilation and buried like herpes across multiple components. Probably/hopefully not directly related but I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 7 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 months ago (6 children) And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct. To the inquisitor:any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose). Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall. I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent [–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago Yeah, motherboard-level tracking is scary because even the OS won’t be able to detect it. The truly paranoid people (and security researchers) go as far as desoldering chips to ensure nothing phones home. permalink fedilink source parent [–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago Where in the source does Firefox expose machine-id to websites? With a quick grep I'm only seeing it around audio? permalink fedilink source parent
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 53 points 4 months ago (20 children) The difference is that Linux isn't sending telemetry to some central entity associating that ID to an IP. Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page. Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account. This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? Fucking gross. And if you know of anything on Linux exposing/transmitting the machine-id, please do let everyone know because nothing should. Anything that does should be considered malware. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 20 child comments replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 months ago (4 children) It's not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-windows-driver-to-now-collect-user-telemetry-data-like-website-categories-by-default/ permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 30 points 4 months ago (1 child) It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. ..on Windows. if you explicitly install their malware and agree to data sharing. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago* I should have clarified, but yes it's the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it's hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don't collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won't have to worry about these things. Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it's fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It's not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools. permalink fedilink source parent [–] inari@piefed.zip 19 points 4 months ago (1 child) That's wild. Shit like this makes me distrust proprietary drivers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] can@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago I distrust proprietary anything at this point permalink fedilink source parent [–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 6 points 4 months ago i think i remember hearing the dbus machine-id being read by google chrome on linux. it could be used for privacy violation with proprietary software, though i personally consider linux machines with chrome or equivalent software installed compromised. permalink fedilink source parent [–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? My interpretation was that they had an IP that they suspected was the perp's home network, and subpoena'd some major platforms to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt. Given the perp's sloppiness in using the same machine for both personal and illicit computing activities, they could even have some network traffic in the capture to indicate which platforms they should subpoena Or if we want to be more conspiracy-minded, maybe they installed a trojan on his computer and this is the parallel evidence trail that law enforcement created so they don't have to admit to hacking the hackers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago Or he used Edge, so Microsoft just has all his browsing data. permalink fedilink source parent [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (11 children) Another user said they think machine-id is readable by the browser. This is absolutely true, machine-id is working as described when it is read by any web browser. So Linux isn’t sending your unique id to a central entity that can associate it with your ip, it’s sending your unique id to any entity you browse to that can then associate it with your ip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 11 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) If you're really worried about that, just change it every time you boot or something. There's a kernel parameter to change it. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (6 children) It's intended to be read by applications on the system. That's like its whole purpose. If you know of any browsers sending it or otherwise making it available without hashing it with an application key first, that would be a problem. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (5 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 5 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 months ago (4 children) It's not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-windows-driver-to-now-collect-user-telemetry-data-like-website-categories-by-default/ permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 30 points 4 months ago (1 child) It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. ..on Windows. if you explicitly install their malware and agree to data sharing. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago* I should have clarified, but yes it's the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it's hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don't collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won't have to worry about these things. Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it's fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It's not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools. permalink fedilink source parent [–] inari@piefed.zip 19 points 4 months ago (1 child) That's wild. Shit like this makes me distrust proprietary drivers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] can@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago I distrust proprietary anything at this point permalink fedilink source parent
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 30 points 4 months ago (1 child) It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. ..on Windows. if you explicitly install their malware and agree to data sharing. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago* I should have clarified, but yes it's the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it's hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don't collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won't have to worry about these things. Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it's fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It's not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago* I should have clarified, but yes it's the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it's hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don't collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won't have to worry about these things. Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it's fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It's not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] inari@piefed.zip 19 points 4 months ago (1 child) That's wild. Shit like this makes me distrust proprietary drivers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] can@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago I distrust proprietary anything at this point permalink fedilink source parent
[–] can@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago I distrust proprietary anything at this point permalink fedilink source parent
[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 6 points 4 months ago i think i remember hearing the dbus machine-id being read by google chrome on linux. it could be used for privacy violation with proprietary software, though i personally consider linux machines with chrome or equivalent software installed compromised. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago (1 child) This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry? My interpretation was that they had an IP that they suspected was the perp's home network, and subpoena'd some major platforms to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt. Given the perp's sloppiness in using the same machine for both personal and illicit computing activities, they could even have some network traffic in the capture to indicate which platforms they should subpoena Or if we want to be more conspiracy-minded, maybe they installed a trojan on his computer and this is the parallel evidence trail that law enforcement created so they don't have to admit to hacking the hackers permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago Or he used Edge, so Microsoft just has all his browsing data. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago Or he used Edge, so Microsoft just has all his browsing data. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (11 children) Another user said they think machine-id is readable by the browser. This is absolutely true, machine-id is working as described when it is read by any web browser. So Linux isn’t sending your unique id to a central entity that can associate it with your ip, it’s sending your unique id to any entity you browse to that can then associate it with your ip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 11 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) If you're really worried about that, just change it every time you boot or something. There's a kernel parameter to change it. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (6 children) It's intended to be read by applications on the system. That's like its whole purpose. If you know of any browsers sending it or otherwise making it available without hashing it with an application key first, that would be a problem. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (5 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 5 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) If you're really worried about that, just change it every time you boot or something. There's a kernel parameter to change it. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Ghoelian@piefed.social 1 point 3 months ago (1 child) I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago What you said was that if a person was actually worried about it there is a kernel parameter to change it. My reply was not intended to refute what you said but instead to illustrate how that approach doesn’t solve the problem of tracking and is not a workable solution for many systems and users. I made that reply to help you and any reader understand the depth and breadth of the problem, not to start a fight. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (6 children) It's intended to be read by applications on the system. That's like its whole purpose. If you know of any browsers sending it or otherwise making it available without hashing it with an application key first, that would be a problem. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (5 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 5 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (5 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 5 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (4 children) Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine. Your claim was that Linux was "sending your unique id to any entity you browse" which is misleading at best. machine-id should never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware. A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked. That doesn't solve anything, really. There's plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn't involve the machine-id. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 4 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (3 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. And the above would literally solve something, it would keep programs from just walking directly across the mat tee posing to get a unique id and force them to do some kind of jetpack backflip routine that, when presented to a court, is much more tenuous. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago (2 children) Machine-id is read as plaintext by programs and transmitted as plaintext by programs. [citation needed] Anything that does that is spyware and if you're aware of anything that does this you should be doing us all a public service and sharing. Hashing the unique id from the host side as opposed to trusting programs to read it and act in a way the user understands and deems appropriate is a much better method of handling calls to identify the equipment than just letting programs read your standardized unique id. I can build something in maybe 10 minutes that will fingerprint your machine to like 99.99% uniqueness. This solution solves nothing. But now we're just repeating ourselves. Go take it to the systemd folks yourself and see how they respond. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (1 child) here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id. Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else. So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier. Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier. The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 1 point 3 months ago So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. Never said things can't read it (in fact, that's very intentional). I even linked you the man page that lays all that out for you. I'm saying your claim that things are transmitting it is baseless. You stated your speculation as fact. Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say If anything is transmitting this ID it should be considered spyware. Whatever, I'm just repeating the same thing over and over again as if your reading comprehension will somehow get better. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] DevDave@piefed.social 19 points 4 months ago (10 children) also there's the TPM chip. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 10 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children) Upvoting both comments for awareness, since Linux is the first of a multi-step process, not a privacy panacea. But we must be clear that in both theory and practice there’s little comparison between systemd and modern Windows machine-user association. Someone using Windows regularly has a gaping wound, is actively bleeding out. Switching to Linux is just a tourniquet, but every other treatment is at best no-effect until that tourniquet is applied. E: transpose systemd/Windows for clarity permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 8 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 5 points 4 months ago (7 children) Also as a life long programmer, I have this feeling it is possible to just go in and make some changes so I can have the system just make shit up about the TPM while indeed also doing the equivalent of having system-d decide to respond with random bullshit. Don't even need to be a programmer, just find a community of them that you trust that distribute their own "fixes". Definitely not doing that with anything else because its both hidden in compilation and buried like herpes across multiple components. Probably/hopefully not directly related but I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 7 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 months ago (6 children) And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct. To the inquisitor:any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose). Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall. I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent [–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago Yeah, motherboard-level tracking is scary because even the OS won’t be able to detect it. The truly paranoid people (and security researchers) go as far as desoldering chips to ensure nothing phones home. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children) Upvoting both comments for awareness, since Linux is the first of a multi-step process, not a privacy panacea. But we must be clear that in both theory and practice there’s little comparison between systemd and modern Windows machine-user association. Someone using Windows regularly has a gaping wound, is actively bleeding out. Switching to Linux is just a tourniquet, but every other treatment is at best no-effect until that tourniquet is applied. E: transpose systemd/Windows for clarity permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 8 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 5 points 4 months ago (7 children) Also as a life long programmer, I have this feeling it is possible to just go in and make some changes so I can have the system just make shit up about the TPM while indeed also doing the equivalent of having system-d decide to respond with random bullshit. Don't even need to be a programmer, just find a community of them that you trust that distribute their own "fixes". Definitely not doing that with anything else because its both hidden in compilation and buried like herpes across multiple components. Probably/hopefully not directly related but I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 7 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 months ago (6 children) And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct. To the inquisitor:any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose). Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall. I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] DevDave@piefed.social 5 points 4 months ago (7 children) Also as a life long programmer, I have this feeling it is possible to just go in and make some changes so I can have the system just make shit up about the TPM while indeed also doing the equivalent of having system-d decide to respond with random bullshit. Don't even need to be a programmer, just find a community of them that you trust that distribute their own "fixes". Definitely not doing that with anything else because its both hidden in compilation and buried like herpes across multiple components. Probably/hopefully not directly related but I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 7 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 months ago (6 children) And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct. To the inquisitor:any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose). Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall. I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 months ago (6 children) And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct. To the inquisitor:any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose). Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall. I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 6 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) Adjacent comment. I've found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement fork(). Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol permalink fedilink source parent
[–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (3 children) Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added "telemetry" collecting logic somewhere in there. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 3 child comments replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago (2 children) Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] DevDave@piefed.social 3 points 4 months ago (1 child) From my experience, the number one culprit of legacy code breaking is someone asking if anyone knows how it works. Second most common culprit is someone making a "quick patch" to legacy code. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 1 child comment replies: [–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 1 point 4 months ago lol damn, flinched at both even though I was prepared permalink fedilink source parent
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago Yeah, motherboard-level tracking is scary because even the OS won’t be able to detect it. The truly paranoid people (and security researchers) go as far as desoldering chips to ensure nothing phones home. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago Where in the source does Firefox expose machine-id to websites? With a quick grep I'm only seeing it around audio? permalink fedilink source parent
[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago If that hacker only knew about tracking by Windows... permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 3 months ago (2 children) I wouldn't call overhauling your entire operating system, including finding alternatives to software you use daily, making sure your hardware is compatible and relearning your entire work method as an "easy trick". permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 points 3 months ago In any other context I'd agree with you, but hacking is the one context where you really do want to do things the hard way. Use ephemeral VMs with passwords only saved in your head, have a dedicated machine for your illegal activities to help isolate your real identity from your hacking. Honestly even if you're just doing HackTheBox and similar best practice is to spin up a Kali VM and only use that VM for the activity since you're literally connecting to a network with a bunch of hackers, even though what you're doing is entirely above the board permalink fedilink source parent [–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago I think you might actually be surprised... permalink fedilink source parent
[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 points 3 months ago In any other context I'd agree with you, but hacking is the one context where you really do want to do things the hard way. Use ephemeral VMs with passwords only saved in your head, have a dedicated machine for your illegal activities to help isolate your real identity from your hacking. Honestly even if you're just doing HackTheBox and similar best practice is to spin up a Kali VM and only use that VM for the activity since you're literally connecting to a network with a bunch of hackers, even though what you're doing is entirely above the board permalink fedilink source parent
[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago I think you might actually be surprised... permalink fedilink source parent