Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 24, 2021 20:24 UTC (Tue) by jebba (guest, #4439)
Parent article: Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

> I always wonder at what scenarios like these are supposed to be about.

How about a hypothetical like: You're fleeing a country after it's government has fallen. To get to the airport you have to go through a hostile checkpoint. You have lists, documents, photos, records of your and your colleagues' work. You just need to reveal enough of your data on your phone to bullshit some fake cop and get thru the checkpoint. You need to make sure you don't lose the rest of the data to the hands of the fake police.

pam_duress should be made user friendly installed by default once it is ready.

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Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 24, 2021 21:01 UTC (Tue) by jafd (subscriber, #129642) [Link] (3 responses)

Are you known to the checkpoint officers as a politically active affiliate to the fallen government? Then you have bigger problems, they will just keep you and seize everything data can be stored on. God forbid they have tech-savvy people in their ranks (or people that can follow instructions like "power the device down immediately and give it to our geeks for imaging, then wrench the password out").

Usually even in the countries governments are expected to maintain at least an appearance of abiding the law, border officers are given way more leeway than you would normally expect from other authorities. Sure you can sue them later, provided you come out of it alive.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 25, 2021 0:50 UTC (Wed) by frostsnow (subscriber, #114957) [Link] (2 responses)

>"power the device down immediately and give it to our geeks for imaging, then wrench the password out"
Seems to me that they'd ideally want an immediate image of the powered-on device in case disk encryption is in use.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 29, 2021 3:58 UTC (Sun) by patrakov (subscriber, #97174) [Link] (1 responses)

Correct, because keeping a LUKS key (or a key that needs to be combines with a password in order to unlock a LUKS volume) in a TPM would make imaging a disk of a powered-off laptop completely useless.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 31, 2021 23:57 UTC (Tue) by frostsnow (subscriber, #114957) [Link]

An additional idea for a duress function then might be to power off the device, or, more subtly, spawn a battery-draining process.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 25, 2021 2:31 UTC (Wed) by sjj (guest, #2020) [Link] (6 responses)

In this hypothetical, you never backed up the data online while the political situation was not this dire? And this data is more important to you than your own life, or freedom? I think we're beyond distro defaults here.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 25, 2021 16:11 UTC (Wed) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (5 responses)

No backups were made. Internet has been down in many parts of Afghanistan. The power is intermittant. Data contains docs of other US citizens (employees), their locations, and others that worked with your western organizations in Afghanistan. Plus the data needs to be shown at Hamid Karzai International Airport, it doesn't help having it on a cloud account.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 26, 2021 0:12 UTC (Thu) by jafd (subscriber, #129642) [Link] (1 responses)

Looks like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. Whatever you do, you're hosed, so maybe better destroy the data so that the hostile neighborhood towelheads don't get at least some of your friends.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 26, 2021 13:45 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

Can we please refrain from using that kind of characterization here? It is not at all welcome at LWN.

thanks,

jake

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 26, 2021 6:14 UTC (Thu) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (2 responses)

Human problems often have practical human solutions.

In this case, I would probably simply have the data encrypted on a portable drive, and the key, in a Password Manager on my laptop. I'd then go to the airport another day to "drop a relative", drop the drive off. And then later arrive for departure myself with the laptop.

Both are useless on their own.

There are various permutations of this approach.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 26, 2021 14:23 UTC (Thu) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (1 responses)

> I'd then go to the airport another day...

Look at what is happening in Kabul. This is very unrealistic.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 30, 2021 22:32 UTC (Mon) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]

Actually, there have been interviews in.. wapo, I think it was, where folks (with valid papers), did exact that, and missed being hit by a bomb by a few hours.

Also, they seemed more concerned that the huge crowds of people without papers made it impossible to get through with their papers, then the Taliban finding them with papers.

The other report I read (in FT) was an American / Afgani citizen that kept putting off going until someone drove her to a spot where she was then helicoptered to the airport.

In short, even with the limited information we have, it seems the situation is a lot more dynamic and complex then the simple hypothetical proposed.

Some American reporters (LA Times) got beat up because they wore local dress and had enough melanin that they were mistaken for a local. Then another Taliban apologized for the mistake, offered them an energy drink and a ?friendly? ride, which they turned down.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 25, 2021 7:12 UTC (Wed) by vadim (subscriber, #35271) [Link] (4 responses)

Smash the device, set it on fire for good measure, and spread the tiny bits of it around, then go through the checkpoint without it.

If you fear for your life you can't afford to play games with people who may want to kill you, and they also may have smart people on their side. The safest way is not to give them anything to work with, and hope that's enough.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 25, 2021 16:08 UTC (Wed) by jebba (guest, #4439) [Link] (3 responses)

Without it, you can't go through the checkpoint.

My "hypothetical" is actually a real-world situation, I thought people would see that. What I'm referring to is the people trying to get thru the Taliban and military checkpoints at Hamid Karzai International Airport. US citizens, and others, have to show docs, often on their phones to the Taliban to get to the inner checkpoint. You suggest they just smash their phone? Then they won't get through checkpoints and will have to remain in Kabul.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 25, 2021 22:33 UTC (Wed) by vadim (subscriber, #35271) [Link] (1 responses)

This is discussion is about a PAM module, though.

* It doesn't apply to cell phones anyway.

* Ideally, carry your documentation on paper. It doesn't run out of battery, and it's far easier to leave home without incriminating papers than without incriminating files on your disk. Computers store all kind of caches, logs and history data all over the place.

* If you already know you're going to go through a checkpoint, you can just wipe whatever you were going to in advance, without having to hope they're not going to image your drive first, that it'll work as intended, and that nobody will notice what happened before letting you through.

* If you think you can be searched unpredictably, the best solution to that is not to have anything interesting on you. Keep your basic docs and cat pictures. Ditch all the incriminating info, or bury it somewhere it can't be easily found if it must remain in existence.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 26, 2021 19:11 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

The problems many Afghan people have/had is that the documents they need to pass the military guards at the Kabul airport are the same documents that can get them killed if the Taliban find them.

So you have to leave your home for the airport with incriminating documents, or there is no point in leaving it at all.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Aug 30, 2021 22:35 UTC (Mon) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]

Is it? The reporting I've read is more like chaos then the simple scenario presented. Seems like the main worry now is that it's just impossible to get to the airport because of the crowds, papers or no.

Adding a "duress" password with PAM Duress

Posted Sep 2, 2021 9:20 UTC (Thu) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link]

You do not have to imagine any hypothetical situation... in the USA, any border agent can perform an in-depth search of your phone or laptop; I could use a duress password just to protect my spouse's nude pictures that I carry in my laptop, when I go on holidays over there.