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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 surveillan
by woodruffw 3y ago
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.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoYou put the stick in, access forbidden web site (for example, Instagram). Take the stick out, police searches your computer, there are no traces. If you were using a regular OS, even through Tor, there are some incriminating traces left, in browser cache, in MFT, in pagefile etc. that can be recovered.
- replwoacause 3y agoHuh? This sounds like fear mongering…
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agothe instagram part? https://www.insider.com/russian-influencer-veronika-loginova-6-years-prison-instagram-ban-2022-9 https://www.insider.com/russian-influencer-veronika-loginova...
- lost_tourist 3y agotwitter too: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/x-unfit-for-banking-because-of-complicity-in-saudi-spying-lawyers-argue/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/x-unfit-for-bank...
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoMuch the same result can be achieved by using a portable browser stored on an encrypted volume run inside a sandbox. For example on Windows, you can use portable Librewolf stored on a veracrypt volume running iside a portable sandboxie-plus sandbox (also stored on the encrypted volume).
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoTails is stronger than this approach in respect of the following threats: the $5 wrench for the veracrypt, keylogger installed on the host OS, memory scanners, the pagefile
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoOh, absolutely, but the approach I mentioned is a little more convenient in some instances and provides a good balance IMO.
- gymbeaux 3y agoI don’t see why you couldn’t have a persistent install of something like Tails or Kali Linux as long as the OS drive is encrypted with a password of a particular length. Can we brute force 25-character passwords 20 years from now? Maybe, but the statute of limitations would elapse by then (in the US anyway). I suppose it wouldn’t be as “safe” as a live USB that doesn’t persist anything, but that’s the tradeoff- you can’t persist anything and probably have some “setup” to do each time you boot from the Live USB.