Duplicati environment variable security

[kenkendk]

If you have some infection that has full system access (able to read files, and dump memory) it is generally game over.

I wrote a bit about the problem here:

Defense against trojans

I agree, but this is actually not possible. Duplicati needs access to the destination, so the process that runs Duplicati needs the credentials in clear. On a compromised machine, ransomware can read such credentials, and do whatever Duplicati can. Storing the data in an OS keychain only guards against cold attacks, not when Duplicati is running. The only true way to guard against ransomware is to guard the server, and have a “no updates, no deletes” user. This means that backups grow foreve…