#347 Setting up USBGuard with GNOME on Fedora Workstation and Fedora Silveblue
Opened 4 months ago by rlengland. Modified 2 months ago

Article Summary:
This article should point out the need for protecting against unknown or malicious USB devices, teach the user to install and enable usbguard-dbus, teach how to do the initial setup and then how to add extra devices.
It should also point out for the user to be careful as, unless the keyboard and mouse are attached (such as on a laptop) or they can be connected via PS/2, misconfiguration might make the device temporarily unusable.

Article Description:
Nowadays you can’t really trust any USB device, malicious devices that appear to be something but are actually only spoofing a safe appearance and are actually malicious are common.
You might not really trust just anyone to plug a USB device on a important device if you don’t trust them enough.
There’s also the problem where you might for some reason to leave the device unattended and can’t guarantee no unauthorized person might have access.

Well, GNOME has integration with usbguard, which works similar to this:

  • On boot, by default all USB devices are blocked except the ones on the allowlist
  • Once you are logged in, GNOME temporarily disables usbguard (i.e. puts into a state where it allow any new device)
  • On the lock screen the following behavior appears:
    • For devices on the allowlist: the device will work and a notification will pop up on unlock about a known device being reconnected
    • For a device not on the allowlist (possibly similar behavior for the ones on blocklist): the device will not work, possibly a notification pops up as well
  • Once unlocked, GNOME disables usbguard again (the same state as mentioned before)

The user would be required to run a command which gets all current USB devices (inclusing system ones) and they will be taught on how to edit that config to add new devices.

A disclaimer should be available indicating that the procedure is risky on some devices due to the possibility of making the system unable to detect the user’s mouse or USB

The steps for the tutorial will be done on a Fedora (wither Workstation or Silverblue) VM with a mouse being used via spice passthrough.

NOTE
We [the editors] think the article should have a large disclaimer at the top explaining everything it has the potential to break. The idea of informing people that the USB devices they connect to their system can be a security concern is a great idea but we don't want the "fix" to become worse than the problem.

This link for reference: https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/401

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/article-proposal-setting-up-usbguard-with-gnome-on-fedora-workstation-and-fedora-silveblue/140873


Metadata Update from @rlengland:
- Issue assigned to mateusrodcosta
- Issue tagged with: article, needs-image

4 months ago

@mateusrodcosta Is this article still on your "ToDo" list?

Hey, I haven't worked on this yet.

I can look into it and consider starting it this month

Hey, I haven't worked on this yet.

I can look into it and consider starting it this month

That sounds great. Thank you for the update.

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