Security usability

This is a WIP page, come back later.

This is a quick page on my feelings towards security and how most security software fails to be usable.

Background

Recently I read the article F-Droid: how is it weakening the Android security model? which provides a critique of F-Droid's security model and recommends people use Google Play Store.

The GrapheneOS developers provided similar critique but it contains numerous uncorrected errors. Instead of correcting this information they have chosen to threaten SylvieLorxu with legal action for pointing out these mistakes. I strongly recommend reconsidering any trust towards GrapheneOS and its developers given their priorities shown here.

Usability

When you look at the current state of open source you tend to see two things:

Security software is near perfect, able to prevent attacks from state actors
People don't use the security software correctly

There's generally two places you could blame for this:

Developers for making unusable software
Users for using software incorrectly

In recent years the latter camp of blaming the user has died down given it's not very actionable to solve.

People have predictable patterns when it comes to usability:

Pick the easiest way to accomplish a task
Become complacent and skip tasks
Do things wrong
Fail at impossible tasks

Any process that humans interact with have to account for these patterns and lower risk to an acceptable level.

Case study: Installing programs

TODO, windows, linux, android, etc

Case study: Key verification

I've used and use a lot of open source security software.

Here's a quick list of the best examples of modern security I can think of:

OpenSSH
Tor and its hidden services
Matrix

All of these rely on users verifying keys in order to get any sane security guarantee.

There are a few ways to do this:

Skip verifying the key
Send the key using another communication service or method
Ask for the key from someone you trust
Meet the person in real life and exchange the key directly
Verifying the key incorrectly

If I had to guess which method is the most common, it's skipping verification. This is the option I pick all the time now for two simple reasons: It's easy, and it's reliable.

Case study: Key loss

TODO

Case study: Key compromise

TODO

Trust

security is a software problem to a social issue

libertarian threat model

not how reality works

bitcoin, keys