Does Any Open Pandora Malware Exist?


But as discussed earlier, there's malicious stuff you can do that doesn't require root access.

I wonder if we could stop PNDs writing or modifying stuff outside their appdata by having a separate pnd_runner user and pnd_run.sh gksu's the run script as that user.

In the mean time, I guess chmod -R a-w /media/SDNAME/myroms might not be a bad idea.  In fact, do it on everything on your SD card apart from the appdata folder.
 
I wonder if we could stop PNDs writing or modifying stuff outside their appdata by having a separate pnd_runner user and pnd_run.sh gksu's the run script as that user.
So long as you use FAT32 there is nothing you can do.
 
The size and background of the community make it pretty unlikely to have any serious kind of malware on the pandora. 

Most (not all thats true, but still a much larger proportion than most other hardware+software platform) are pretty familiar with malwares in general and how to avoid / find them. Combined with how small the community is, any malware is most likely to be found and bashed pretty darn quickly heh. 

Not to mention, the small community size also mean its pretty unlikely someone will spend the time to write a malware for it heh (less chances to catch people with it). 
 
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TBH, you're probably more likely to get malware through Java (if you install it) rather than anything Pandora specific.

There's probably a few Linux shell script pieces that could operate on the Pandora, but they certainly won't be very prolific.

Actually, it's given me a nice little idea for a network multiplayer game - "Find The Virus", each person gets a VM with a dummy OS that gets connected to the other players, and they have to chase down the virus program and remove it :) Could maybe make it competitive by being able to send viruses to the other player, and you have to patch your system whilst infecting others. Longest amount of time "clean" wins :)
 
TBH, you're probably more likely to get malware through Java (if you install it) rather than anything Pandora specific.


There's probably a few Linux shell script pieces that could operate on the Pandora, but they certainly won't be very prolific.


Actually, it's given me a nice little idea for a network multiplayer game - "Find The Virus", each person gets a VM with a dummy OS that gets connected to the other players, and they have to chase down the virus program and remove it :) Could maybe make it competitive by being able to send viruses to the other player, and you have to patch your system whilst infecting others. Longest amount of time "clean" wins :)
Who remembers "Virus - the game" game for Win 9x?  :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus:_The_Game
 
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It is very easy to make a PND that brings your Pandora to a grinding halt by executing a forkbomb or doing something similar that will make the device non-responsive. In fact, you don't need a PND for that, just open a terminal and type a "forkbomb smiley" if you want to try it out:


){ :|:& };:
It is also very easy to make a PND that destroys all your data - the system files (firmware) will survive, but all other files in your filesystem, provided you have permissions (which is always the case if it's a FAT filesystem), can be easily destroyed. "rm -rf /" will do the job.

Moreover, it is not possible, not even theoretically, to make an anti-malware checker that can detect all malware, or even just malware of some specific kind. It will always be an arms race between malware writers and anti-malware software writers. This is a consequence of Rice's theorem.

In a sufficiently secure OS (e.g. GNU/Linux), it is possible to ensure that malware is contained -- that is, all software, including any potential malware, can only access files and memory for which the user has permissions. One process cannot corrupt another one, files for which you don't have write permissions cannot be modified. This helps a bit, and allows you to set up a "safe sandbox" simply by creating a new user account. But of course usually you are logged in as yourself, and the files you care about are files you have write permissions for, so malware can still screw things up. There's no way around that.

So it boils down to identifying the motivations of malware writers -- if the problem is reduced to unintentional malware, it's good enough. Why do people write malware? I would assume the main reasons are profit, spying, power (e.g. a botnet), and juvenile pranks. Obviously the Pandora is not a very good target platform if you have these motivations. So that's probably the reason why there is no malware for the Pandora (at least not specifically targeted at the Pandora, e.g. by packaging a PND and uploading it to the repo).
 
Firstly there needs to be a reason to write such soft. Data mining. Email harvesting.. And so on.. But op isnt big community so it will not be profitable for creator anyway. I wouldnt be surprised when nobody bothers to write any malware hijacking app for op in nearest future or even far future. Malware that destructs data is a relict of 90s. Today only hijacking a sensitive data is profitable..
 
Firstly there needs to be a reason to write such soft. Data mining. Email harvesting.. And so on.. But op isnt big community so it will not be profitable for creator anyway. I wouldnt be surprised when nobody bothers to write any malware hijacking app for op in nearest future or even far future. Malware that destructs data is a relict of 90s. Today only hijacking a sensitive data is profitable..
 Mhm... its not too rare a data mining app arrives on new handhelds and mini pc's. on linux, everything related to critical system files. they need Root Permissions. Normally it would be username Root. Password Toor (backtracker 5 R. on my virtualbox) to do any severe damage.

It is very easy to make a PND that brings your Pandora to a grinding halt by executing a forkbomb or doing something similar that will make the device non-responsive. In fact, you don't need a PND for that, just open a terminal and type a "forkbomb smiley" if you want to try it out:


){ :|:& };:
It is also very easy to make a PND that destroys all your data - the system files (firmware) will survive, but all other files in your filesystem, provided you have permissions (which is always the case if it's a FAT filesystem), can be easily destroyed. "rm -rf /" will do the job.

Moreover, it is not possible, not even theoretically, to make an anti-malware checker that can detect all malware, or even just malware of some specific kind. It will always be an arms race between malware writers and anti-malware software writers. This is a consequence of Rice's theorem.

In a sufficiently secure OS (e.g. GNU/Linux), it is possible to ensure that malware is contained -- that is, all software, including any potential malware, can only access files and memory for which the user has permissions. One process cannot corrupt another one, files for which you don't have write permissions cannot be modified. This helps a bit, and allows you to set up a "safe sandbox" simply by creating a new user account. But of course usually you are logged in as yourself, and the files you care about are files you have write permissions for, so malware can still screw things up. There's no way around that.

So it boils down to identifying the motivations of malware writers -- if the problem is reduced to unintentional malware, it's good enough. Why do people write malware? I would assume the main reasons are profit, spying, power (e.g. a botnet), and juvenile pranks. Obviously the Pandora is not a very good target platform if you have these motivations. So that's probably the reason why there is no malware for the Pandora (at least not specifically targeted at the Pandora, e.g. by packaging a PND and uploading it to the repo).
a forkbomb smiley? seriously.

TBH, you're probably more likely to get malware through Java (if you install it) rather than anything Pandora specific.


There's probably a few Linux shell script pieces that could operate on the Pandora, but they certainly won't be very prolific.


Actually, it's given me a nice little idea for a network multiplayer game - "Find The Virus", each person gets a VM with a dummy OS that gets connected to the other players, and they have to chase down the virus program and remove it :) Could maybe make it competitive by being able to send viruses to the other player, and you have to patch your system whilst infecting others. Longest amount of time "clean" wins :)
Who remembers "Virus - the game" game for Win 9x?  :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus:_The_Game
wait. there was a windows 9x? i got to search that up
 
I wonder if we could stop PNDs writing or modifying stuff outside their appdata by having a separate pnd_runner user and pnd_run.sh gksu's the run script as that user.
So long as you use FAT32 there is nothing you can do.
I don't often mount FAT FSes, but can't you specify permissions to mount as? So you mount the SD as local user, mod 0447, but when you run a PND it mounts that PND under the pnd_runner user, and runs it as such, so that the PND can only read stuff mounted on SD, but have full control over its appdata (which would be fuse mounted on top of the mounted PND).

Although... I think we're screwed by needing to let programs create files on the SD. To do that we'd need to make directories other writable, and I don't know if you can do that on a FAT mount, plus, if you do that it lets people delete files from that folder iirc. Oh well, it was an idea.
 
lol... Also ME never happened, I regressed everything about it.
Didn't know if KillRoXx was supposed to be joking, but meh, I thought Win95 and Win98 were pretty good, much better than my experience with Linux at the time, which I couldn't get to do anything, not even use my 56k modem to get me on the internet.
That said, I never used ME, so I can't comment on that one ;)
 
Hey I've been a proud owner of my Pandora since Feb 2012. I was curious if any Malware, Spyware, etc. has been found? I'm aware of that some do exist on Linux, but since the Pandora is a custom version of Linux, it made me wonder.


Thanks for any info!
relax, there is none. The Pandora scene is not a target. How many ppl have you met in your life that you feared may do you any harm to you ? Me, (far) less than a handful. I.e. ppl. are usually very nice if you treat them right -- It's injustice what attracts these 'criminals', for what I've witnessed. You'd be more worried about central i-net hubs being hacked -- more booty, more fame.
 
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windows_me_04.jpg


_53398803_disc.jpg


Whoops! :D
 
So you mount the SD as local user
FAT32 doesn't have users. Most users (I would even guess as many as 95% but don't ask me to justify that) have their cards FAT32 formatted. Once a FAT32 card is mounted you have full access to it. Write protection is just flags which are easily removed, user permissions are non-existent, it is a free-for-all. If you can read from one file you can read any file; if you can write one file you can write any file; if you can delete one file you can delete any file. The only way to "secure" a FAT32 card in Linux is to mount the whole thing protected, but then the PNDs wouldn't be able to write anything to their appdata directory either.
If your cards are mounted EXT or similar there is probably something you could do to ensure that PNDs can only write to their /mnt directory and never directly to the card itself but I suspect it is far, far more trouble than it is worth. Something like making the card root owned and then setting permission of the appdata file to 777 when a PND starts and restoring it to 600 when it exits.

But then you aren't able to write to the card itself: LibreOffice and GIMP becomes effectively useless; Firefox would only be able to save files into it's appdata directory from which you would need to manually copy things out of; probably a lot of other things.
 
Yes, but once you mount a filesystem it becomes posix compliant, and thus has permissions (even if you can't set them persistently).


I've already explained how I would implement a secure PND mount that can modify appdata but only write to user files where permissions have been set correctly, using the two users on an EXT formatted SD, so there's no need to chown everything as PNDs are mounted and unmounted as I see it. It's not something I'm planning on doing myself, but something that could be implemented in the firmware, although if a solution can't be found for 95% of users it's 95% pointless to even do that.
 
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