DangerZone
officercia.ethSource: dangerzone.rocks/about.html
It’s Still Possible to Get Hacked With Danger.Zone
Like all software, it’s possible that Dangerzone (and more importantly, the software that it relies on like LibreOffice and Docker) has security bugs. Malicious documents are designed to target a specific piece of software – for example, Adobe Reader on Mac. It’s possible that someone could craft a malicious document that specifically targets Dangerzone itself. An attacker would need to chain these exploits together to succeed at hacking Dangerzone:
- An exploit for either LibreOffice or GraphicsMagic
- A container escape exploit in the Linux kernel
- In Mac and Windows, a VM escape exploit for Docker Desktop
If you opened such a malicious document with Dangerzone, it would start the first container and begin the conversion process. While it was converting the original document (say, a docx file) into a PDF using LibreOffice, it would exploit a vulnerability in LibreOffice to hack the container. Then, it would exploit a vulnerability in the Linux kernel to escape the container, and from there attempt to take over the computer.
If you keep Docker Desktop updated and regularly update the container that Dangerzone uses, such attacks will be much more expensive for attackers.
Another way a malicious document may harm your system, even with Dangerzone, is if it is crafted to attack the document previewing capabilities of the operating system itself (e.g. the part that generates file thumbnails or document previews in a side-panel of the file manager). Due to the high level of integration of these features in the operating system, disabling them completely may be challenging. For this reason, keeping your system always up to date is the most practical solution to minimize this risk.