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Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

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Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#131

Post by paravirtualized »

daqhris wrote: post #42
jacknews wrote: post #10

I might be wrong but I think this was a project originated by one of the branches of the US armed forces or security services? In which case, it should be pretty secure. Although, there's the obvious 'honeypot' concern. But maybe I'm thinking of another distro, that ran from RAM and didn't write anything to disk.

I can't validate if you are wrong or not. Just bring to your attention that one of their marketing slogan is "Amnesia" and "Persistent Storage on a USB stick". https://tails.net/about/index.en.html The 'honeypot' concern is somehow valid because full-on privacy on the internet is as hard to achieve as privacy in a public park. Only its user can determine if their online activities goes against the (legal/moral/financ…

The Tails team made the fantastic decision of modifying the Tor Browser, giving Tails users a unique fingerprint as opposed to regular Tor Browser users.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#132

Post by paravirtualized »

trts wrote: post #112
WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #59

Tor servers were breached by the CIA/NSA, I would be careful

what's the alternative to Tor?

There are no real "alternatives"; but see I2P, Lokinet and Freenet for some other options.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#133

Post by l0new0lf-G »

I know it sounds weird, but unless you reviewed the source code AND built the binary from it, no open source software is to be trusted.

The versions ready for download may be based on code slightly different than the one in the repo -either deliberetely, or because the NSA managed to redirect the download link to its' servers.

There is always a probability that an anonymity product will be proved to be a honeypot. Even open source projects may either do as mentioned (provide a "hacked" version for downloading), or even include some code that downloads and runs a seemingly harmless module from an external source, that is not so harmless in reality.

If the CIA gives enough money to the core developers or even just the website owner, what do they have to lose? Their reputation? Not everyone cares about that.

I know these scenarios sound far-fetched and paranoid, but nothing should sound impossible after Snowden's revelations. Even for open source software.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#134

Post by vorticalbox »

yieldcrv wrote: post #61
vorticalbox wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yes and no. Assuming there was an exploit that broke out of the Firefox sand box you are correct that any connection is via tor. Though tails isn't 100% sure, you could chain a Firefox cve + user land to root and then turn off the to routing rules.

administrator/root is turned off by default, and even if the user turned it on during boot, they would still have to be tricked into approving or putting in their password again, am I missing something about the veracity of possible exploits?

There are some exploits that allow for gaining root access.

One that comes to mind is dirty sock[0]. It uses a vulnerability in the snap api to create a root user.

https://github.com/initstring/dirty_sock/blob/master/dirty_s...

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#135

Post by mark_l_watson »

throwitaway156 wrote: post #127
mark_l_watson wrote: post #77

I love the idea of Tails. It is unfortunate that it only runs on Intel macOS. I consider my personal setup to be pretty good, but not Tails grade privacy: 1. Avoid installing apps, use Safari with all possible privacy settings. 2. Run Lockdown mode iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. 3. Use duck duck go and ProtonMail. 4. Prefer to run in Safari private browsing tabs. 5. Become non-private when logging into Amazon to make a purc…

Being blunt: your setup doesnt protect you from Apple. Websites will and does recognize you on every visit, both those done in private tabs and the usual ones. DDG and ProtonMail i cant comment on, but they are one of the better choices for the less tech-savvy/i-want-to-spend-my-free-time-having-fun. You have a pretty nice setup in terms of security, however. If you want better protection for websites identifying you…

Thanks, useful comment.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#136

Post by mark_l_watson »

mrb wrote: post #79
mark_l_watson wrote: post #77

I love the idea of Tails. It is unfortunate that it only runs on Intel macOS. I consider my personal setup to be pretty good, but not Tails grade privacy: 1. Avoid installing apps, use Safari with all possible privacy settings. 2. Run Lockdown mode iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. 3. Use duck duck go and ProtonMail. 4. Prefer to run in Safari private browsing tabs. 5. Become non-private when logging into Amazon to make a purc…

"It is unfortunate that it only runs on Intel macOS." Tails runs on most computers. It doesn't have to be a "macOS" (you mean Apple?). macOS is an OS, tails replaces the OS.

I misspoke. I know that it works on any Intel computer that you can plug a USB flash drive into.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#137

Post by alex-robbins »

smoldesu wrote: post #72
analognoise wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NixOs it's called Impermanence: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Impermanence Also NixOs has absurd levels of control for upgrades, rollbacks, and control over the build and resulting files.

Be warned; your hard drive may file for a divorce after a few years of daily-driving NixOS. It is both a blessing and a curse: $ smol@computer ~> du -hcs /nix/store/ 257G /nix/store/

I'm so sick of this claim. Nix allows you to keep old versions of things installed, but you certainly don't have to.

When I switched from Debian to NixOS a few years ago, I installed it on a separate subvolume, and it ended up taking almost exactly as much space as Debian did (about 12 GiB with gnome and everything else). And really, what would you expect? It's nearly all the same code, just organized differently in the filesystem.

P.S., you can check the store usage of the current system profile with `nix path-info -Sh /run/current-system`.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#139

Post by woodruffw »

Could any HN users speak about their experience and rationale for using Tails?

My outsiders’ perspective is that the threat model for these kinds of surveillance resistant tools is somewhat perverse: they trade indistinguishability (being lost in the crowd) for a nominally more anonymous but extremely unusual datapoint (a host/browser/etc. that basically looks like no other normal machine.)

Put another way: without a clear attacker in mind, my outsiders’ perspective is that Tails feels a bit like wearing a paper bag in public to foil public CCTV: it might work, but is far likely to provoke contact with the relevant authorities than just attempting to blend in.

Re: Tails is a portable OS that protects against surveillance and censorship

#140

Post by nonameiguess »

londons_explore wrote: post #67
crimmin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more secure if you use a proper write once DVD as well to read the live cd. It's a bit slower to boot but the best way to prevent persistence is always to make it virtually physically impossible by not having any physical storage mediums connected

I think the main concern of most tor-users is that their real IP address (and hence location) is leaked. For that, just a run-of-the-mill firefox exploit is all that is needed, and suddenly exploit code can do a wifi scan and get a very precise location.

Honestly, if this is a serious concern and you're already willing to go to all the other trouble, you may as well do your most sensitive Internet browsing from your car, connecting only to public WiFi in parking lots, in cities you don't actually live in, and never stay connected for more than a few hours at at time. Or take a hint from history's most secure criminals and don't do any of this yourself at all. Use paid underlings who fear you more than they fear prison and are willing to do time rather than rat you out.
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