> Wouldn't it be better if Paramiko was obliged to access your keys via the agent?
That's just kicking the can down the road. You get the same exact problem, but with the agent permissions rather than the actual keys.
The problem is "I installed paramiko and I know what it does and I want it to access my SSH credentials, but I don't want evillib123 to access my SSH credentials even though I have installed it as well and I think I know what it does, but I am mistaken" and the distinction between the two cases above is in the intent and judging intent is hard.
> One of the obvious things the agent could do on a workstation is mention that your keys are being used
This has been tried many times. Windows UAC is one of the more ubiquitous and notorious examples. If everything starts sending you notifications you stop paying attention to them. That is what happened to UAC, it would notify users about important things, software installs, system setting changes, admin accesses etc. but it was doing it too much and most people would just click through without actually reading what the notification is about. And the reason it was doing it too much is because it cannot judge intent. It cannot tell the difference between me installing an application deliberately and me installing an application because I was tricked into it somehow.
> You get the same exact problem, but with the agent permissions rather than the actual keys.
This is also importantly wrong in a subtle way. If evillib123 steals a SSH private key, that key isn't private any more and my only option is to revoke the key and make a new one. Nothing else works, they have the key and can authenticate as me as often as they like whenever they like until that key's access is revoked.
But if they only have permission to get the agent to do operations their ability to authenticate is limited by the agent. If they lose access to the agent they can't authenticate any more. That would happen if I uninstall their malware, or if the agent locks access of its own accord (e.g. it's common to auto-lock after suspending a machine or locking the screen) or if the machine is just switched off altogether.
This is a good point. Agent still does not solve the "I thought I meant to do it, but I didn't really mean to" problem, but I agree that it does take a step towards minimizing the damage.
UAC interrupts you, which is bad. UAC thinks that a thing happening is so important you need to acknowledge it. Everybody's going to learn to click past.
I'm talking about notifications not interruptions. At most a toast message, much more likely just a small indicator lights up. Not a big deal - when you'd expect it.
Think about the turn indicator on the dashboard of your car. When you indicate one way or the other a lamp illuminates, on and off, sympathetic to (and in older models directly run by the same relays as) the external turn lamps. But it doesn't ask you to confirm. "Are you really turning Left? Yes/ No" and since you're expecting it you hardly notice. But, imagine you're on the highway and suddenly that lamp illuminates for no apparent reason. That's weird right? You might be too busy to do anything about it immediately, but you'd now be concerned that perhaps there's a problem. Good!
That's what I'm talking about. Yes, out of a million users whose key got abused, maybe 90% of them weren't looking at the screen when it happened and 90% of those left were too busy or didn't understand why it was strange, and 90% of those who noticed never actually investigated and 90% those who investigated give up without notifying anyone about this weird phenomenon... you've still got a hundred users complaining about the problem.
People act like UAC leads to banner blindness but I don't think that really holds up.
In the mobile space you get prompts for soooo many things, and loads of people see "ask for location data" and say no when they think it shouldn't be used! The system works!
I see loads of articles about people talking around permissions. Much much more than for tools on desktop computers. I believe that the higher visibility makes people noticing much more likely.
Of course the hypothetical "don't care" person won't notice.... but definitionally they won't ever notice!
I think it's fairly undisputed that the little lights on webcams that are on when the camera is enabled has totally worked, and the location service blue bar on iOS has worked well too IMO.
That's just kicking the can down the road. You get the same exact problem, but with the agent permissions rather than the actual keys.
The problem is "I installed paramiko and I know what it does and I want it to access my SSH credentials, but I don't want evillib123 to access my SSH credentials even though I have installed it as well and I think I know what it does, but I am mistaken" and the distinction between the two cases above is in the intent and judging intent is hard.
> One of the obvious things the agent could do on a workstation is mention that your keys are being used
This has been tried many times. Windows UAC is one of the more ubiquitous and notorious examples. If everything starts sending you notifications you stop paying attention to them. That is what happened to UAC, it would notify users about important things, software installs, system setting changes, admin accesses etc. but it was doing it too much and most people would just click through without actually reading what the notification is about. And the reason it was doing it too much is because it cannot judge intent. It cannot tell the difference between me installing an application deliberately and me installing an application because I was tricked into it somehow.