Stefan,

Don't worry about my bubble, there isn't one. The keystroke watching problem is one I was starting to consider. For about £8 one can buy a little keyboard, more of a remote control with letters. If this were plugged into the Pi for use when typing secure passwords could that help? I'm guessing this would require the Pi to run both X2Go server and a client with the person's laptop connected as a client to the same X2Go session. Is this possible?

I worry that people would not want to bypass their familair OS and laptop for day to day browsing as per your suggestion of inverting the idea. I can see that is a great solution for an office environment though, excellent even. 

Thanks,
John

On Monday, 27 March 2017, Stefan Baur <X2Go-ML-1@baur-itcs.de> wrote:
Am 27.03.2017 um 16:50 schrieb John Cobo:

> If a person had a small, inexpensive computer to use only for
> on-line banking and a few other secure things that would seem to solve a
> lot of problems.

Aaand that's where you're mistaken.  Sorry to burst your bubble.
There are two ways to do this that aren't just security theater, but
provide real security, and your approach isn't among them.

One is a live system that you only boot for banking, and that has its
kernel patched so it is unable to detect and access hard disk media - it
will only access optical and USB media.  This is the safest way to do
it, but of course, less convenient.
A German computer magazine called c't issued ISOs with such a modified
kernel for a few years (it was called c't bankix), but recently
abandoned it.  There seems to be a volunteer that has picked up
development from where they left, though - he keeps posting updates in
their bankix online forum.

The more convenient way is to invert the idea you had:
Use an X2GoServer for all "world wild [sic] web" surfing, and your local
browser for banking and other secure applications only.
This requires a firewall that is set to deny traffic from LAN to WAN by
default, and a DMZ in which the X2GoServer resides.
We actually offer such systems as appliances for medical professionals,
with commercial support and all, see e.g. here:
<http://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:success-stories:electronic-glovebox>

Your approach, using the X2GoServer for the banking stuff only, is
insecure for the simple reason that if you use your local machine for
day to day surfing, malware can (and will!) hide in the background and
capture your keystrokes.  It doesn't matter if they're directed at the
local browser or at the X2GoClient - as soon as you start typing
https://www.ubs.com or https://www.morganstanley.com, the bad guys will
know that the next sequence of characters will be your banking login
details.

So the only safe and sane approach is to absolutely make sure your
client computer is clean and has no connection to the internet (save for
the few trustworthy sites you whitelisted), and consider the X2GoServer
your "throwaway" machine, because there is no way it could "snoop
backwards" to your client, especially when you close X2GoClient before
logging in to your banking site.


> I've tried writing the Pi's IP back onto the USB, but do to what some
> call a bug in Raspbian/Debian the address is not available when boot
> scripts run.

That's why you don't do such things at boot time, but instead whenever
the interface goes up.  Have a look at our X2Go-TCE-Live solution - it
displays MAC and IP before the login prompt, but waits until the
interface is up and has an IP before creating that file.

Kind Regards,
Stefan Baur

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