How Snowden secretly transmitted information

[thewayne]

There are several linux operating systems out there that are designed for privacy and secrecy. It's been acknowledged for a long time that one of the best ways to do such is to mount them on read-only media, like a CD or DVD, boot from the media, do what you need to do and shut down. Nothing is written to the local drive, so there's no forensic evidence from local computers to recover. Also, you're immune to malware being installed on your system since nothing can be written to your drive and the hard drive in the system is disconnected.

This is what Snowden did using a distribution called TAILS, it's a product of two anonymous groups working towards the same goal. You can load it on a thumb drive or CD/DVD, boot from it, and it provides you with a browser and Open Office installation and routes everything through TOR. It has other security features to keep you anonymous and encrypted. This, apparently, is how he communicated with the writers that he'd selected to send documents to.

Apparently it is not a casual installation and takes some configuration work to make it function properly. Not for casual players.

I think there are some networks where this wouldn't work, such as at my uni. Before you use a device on their network, you have to sign in to your student account and register the MAC address, then reboot your device. I think they're using a combination of MAC registry at the switch level and also perhaps a persistent cookie, though I haven't checked in to that. I suppose you could use TAILS to register the MAC address, which would be the address of the local computer's ethernet card, but you wouldn't be able to store the cookie, so I don't know how TAILS would work in an environment like that, or even if it could get out to the internet.

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tails/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/04/15/1940240/snowden-used-the-linux-distro-designed-for-internet-anonymity

Comments

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

IIRC, in Cory's afterward he talked about a couple of groups working on something like ParanoidLinux. Apparently it has borne at least two fruit. And this I think it exceptionally cool.

[silveradept]

I think it's cool, too. Now, if we can get it so something like TAILS can be configured and used by ordinary people, then we'll have a really good time with everything.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with TOR, not east to configure. Some people came out with a TOR black box that is pretty much zero config and just plug in, but no one knows what its guts are, so it may be pre-compromised.

[silveradept]

Yeah, you can't really have closed components on crypto that's potentially going to be used to mask your presence against the government or the authprities that want to ensure your information doesn't get out.