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Comment by steelframe | Hacker News Reader

I built a separate Arch Linux box just for Steam gaming. I will never log into any of my sensitive accounts -- email, banking, etc. -- on that machine. It's a Framework laptop so I can physically keep the camera and microphone disconnected. I basically treat it like a public terminal.

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Do you truly expect any steam games to have anything like a root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials?

I feel if this were the case literally anything I install on my PC would be suspect. Installing ssh would be a much more scary thing than a random steam game.

No, he expects the root kit will open up his machine to automated worms.

I thought some games snooped through your system.

Kerbal Space Program comes to mind, I recall it had adware that did this.

Unity has some kind of data collection that can be used for analytics and advertising, so you might need to opt out of that in a Unity game. I think that came up in KSP as well.

https://unity.com/legal/game-player-and-app-user-privacy-pol...

https://unity.com/legal/game-player-and-app-user-privacy-faq

The concern is that malicious actors can take advantage of what is certainly a poorly written rootkit.

>Do you truly expect any steam games to have anything like a root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/steam-game-mo...

"Downfall, a fan expansion for the popular Slay the Spire indie strategy game, was breached on Christmas Day to push Epsilon information stealer malware using the Steam update system.

Once installed on a compromised computer, the malware will collect cookies and saved passwords and credit cards from web browsers (Google Chrome, Yandex, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi), as well as Steam and Discord info.

It will also look for documents containing 'password' in the filenames and for more credentials, including the local Windows login and Telegram."

That's not a steam game, that's a user mod (read: random binary downloaded from the internet and executed). Also, it doesn't need kernel level access to do any of that stuff, it can get by just fine with normal application level permissions.

This is no different to downloading a random binary off the internet and being surprised it's malicious.

patched: https://hackerone.com/reports/470520 https://hackerone.com/reports/1070835 https://secret.club/2021/04/20/source-engine-rce-invite.html https://secret.club/2020/10/30/alien-swarm-rce.html https://threatpost.com/dark-souls-servers-down-rce-bug/17789... https://blog.thalium.re/posts/achieving-remote-code-executio... https://www.pcgamer.com/garrys-mod-cough-virus-is-cured-but-...

you can buy these games in their unpatched state today, and download a poc for them from github too: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-10718 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-20817

frankly playing video games on a dedicated device and network is the reasonable response to reading this shit

I've been wondering is how long before we get a 'PC-console' dedicated gaming device, there's certain aspects where PC is falling into the gravity well of the console model. Whether that's the technical aspects like how far you can lock down for security (and who's security) or DRM, whether people only want a nice front end, whether everything should be managed by a defacto 'good' platform holder versus allowing companies to do their own thing (clients or commerce). At some point such a thing looks like a more expensive ultra-pro console.

Then that has to be balanced against the freedom aspect where people want flexibility to build a workstation how they want and do what they want on it, and expecting it all to work (windows games being supported on non-windows is a more common issue now). PC casts the broadest net and catches a lot of different desires, similar with how high-end and low-end seem to be splitting over the past ~5 years rather than being a continuous spectrum I wonder if there will be distinct types of PC for gaming (eg set models like the old Commodore Amiga) or if trying to resist splits does more harm than good.

Speaking for myself, I would never buy such a thing. The reason I game on PC is because I need a decent PC for work anyway, so building one that can also game is cheaper than buying a console.

If I was really concerned about security I'd sooner dual boot into a second OS that had nothing on it, than buy a second box just to game on.

Yep, a lot of this comes down to "who's security" and what everyone can take as a foundation to build trust upon, or what their thresholds are

That's what "steam deck" is. A dedicated gaming device that is still also a general purpose computer that you have full control over.

> root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials

Yes. I truly believe some janky random anti-cheat kernel module could very well capture telemetry about my keystrokes to a log and then send that log off to a server.

At the very least I don't trust that it's secure enough to be in the kernel of a machine for which I require any degree of trust in its integrity.

I don't expect that. I expect that publicly traded companies will cut corners in developing their kernel extension (like always), turning them into literal root kits waiting for anyone willing to exploit them.

See: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/22/h/ransomware-ac...

dedicated hardware is a good idea, but too expensive for many. dedicated os is a good first step.

at that rate why bother using arch for the box? unless you never touch online multiplayer games, i can understand that it probably works for you.

Yep, same here. I have a dedicated gaming machine because I’m afraid to expose my banking information.

I've heard good things about the Framework laptops from a modularity perspective, but how are the thermals? Can it have a dedicated GPU?

This is the way.

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