## Copyright (C) 2012 - 2014 Patrick Schleizer ## See the file COPYING for copying conditions. Source: security-misc Section: misc Priority: optional Maintainer: Patrick Schleizer Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), faketime, genmkfile Homepage: https://github.com/Whonix/security-misc Vcs-Browser: https://github.com/Whonix/security-misc Vcs-Git: https://github.com/Whonix/security-misc.git Standards-Version: 3.9.8 Package: security-misc Architecture: all Depends: ${misc:Depends} Replaces: tcp-timestamps-disable Description: enhances misc security settings The following settings are changed: . deactivates previews in Dolphin; deactivates previews in Nautilus; deactivates TCP timestamps; deactivates Netfilter's connection tracking helper; . TCP time stamps (rfc 1323) allow for tracking clock information with millisecond resolution. This may or may not allow an attacker to learn information about the system clock at such a resolution, depending on various issues such as network lag. This information is available to anyone who monitors the network somewhere between the attacked system and the destination server. It may allow an attacker to find out how long a given system has been running, and to distinguish several systems running behind NAT and using the same IP address. It might also allow to look for clocks that match an expected value to find the public IP used by a user. . Hence, this package disables this feature by shipping the /etc/sysctl.d/tcp_timestamps.conf configuration file. . Note that TCP time stamps normally have some usefulness. They are needed for: . * the TCP protection against wrapped sequence numbers; however, to trigger a wrap, one needs to send roughly 2^32 packets in one minute: as said in rfc 1700, "The current recommended default time to live (TTL) for the Internet Protocol (IP) [45,105] is 64". So, this probably won't be a practical problem in the context of Anonymity Distributions. . * "Round-Trip Time Measurement", which is only useful when the user manages to saturate their connection. When using Anonymity Distributions, probably the limiting factor for transmission speed is rarely the capacity of the user connection. . Netfilter's connection tracking helper module increases kernel attack surface by enabling superfluous functionality such as IRC parsing in the kernel (!) . Hence, this package disables this feature by shipping the /etc/sysctl.d/nf_conntrack_helper.conf configuration file.