Re: [Tails-dev] [Tails-ux] Tails Greeter settings

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Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list, duc01k
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] [Tails-ux] Tails Greeter settings
intrigeri:
> sajolida (2020-02-25):
>> Surprisingly, it's not even clear to me what the implications of the
>> Language and Region settings can be on privacy. So I'm moving the
>> discussion to tails-dev@??? in order to ask our fellow developers.
>
> First, most, if not all, exploited applications have access to
> locale configuration.
>
> Wrt. network fingerprinting:
>
>  - We have to assume that some applications may expose the system's
>    locale configuration as part of their network activity.

>
>  - For Tor Browser and Thunderbird, our configuration tries to avoid
>    this (best effort) but it's impossible to prove we did not
>    miss anything.

>
> Wrt. local storage:
>
>  - If an adversary can read the content of the persistent storage, I'm
>    pretty sure that the locale configuration can be easily inferred
>    from that.

>
>  - If/once we allow persisting the locale in cleartext on the system
>    partition, this information will be available to an adversary
>    who seizes the Tails device.


Thanks for the technical details! So it will really not be easy to
explain practical the implications in a simple way.

I stored this info on #17532 but I won't make it part of our priorities
right now because the cost/benefit is really not clear to me.

--
sajolida
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