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Secure, Portable, Virtual Privacy Machine
solcity writes "Looks like an online privacy company, Metropipe, are
planning to release a secure linux virtual privacy machine that runs from a USB stick. The image contains a pre-release of their new 'Metropipe Tunneler' product and also contains Firefox, and Thunderbird with the Enigmail/gpg extension. Looks
like the whole thing is based on damnsmalllinux
and uses qemu to boot on Windows or Linux
without any installation or configuration. Very interesting use of qemu and damnsmalllinux, and all 100% GPL."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And yet I am tunneling through SOMEONE ELSES proxy (which isn't free) to do my "secure" work.
I'm sorry but I cannot bring myself to trust my cookies, settings, and information to travel over anyone else's network. It's not safe unless *I* am the one controlling the proxy and the tunnel between the two.
SSH, Putty (for Windows users), and squid on your own machine is what I use. Yeah, you still can't avoid keyloggers and the like but at least you know that you are controlling what is being logged and where.
this is more of a gadget than a your-rights-online
No, PGP is a commercial, non-GPL'd product.
They mean GPG, open source software that works in the same way.
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The zip is 82MB. Probably want to run this on a 256MB or larger key so you have room to store data as well...
Depending on what else is included in the distro... Yes. But there are already distros that let you do that NOW. There's even Windows live CDs that will let you do it to other windows systems. Google is your friend.
The data on the laptop is insecure. Anyone with physical access to a machine can read the unencrypted data on that machine. It has been that way forever. The existance of this product doesn't make it any less secure than it already was.
However, the person with this USB fob has increased his security. Thus a net gain in securtity. If you want to be secure you need to take care of yourself. Sticking your head in the ground is not a viable security plan.
Presumably, if they were concerned, they'd have encrypted their files.
OK, let's think this through:
As I read it, this is a Linux session running in a virtual machine under the host operating system - the idea being that any "sensative" data resides in the virtual session, so the host has no visibility to it.
Except that the host is providing all the screen and keyboard access, so if the host is comprimised and is running VNC the attacker can see where you are going, and what your password is.
True, *IF* the password is only the SSH keyphrase for a private key that is only accessible to the virtual machine, then *maybe* it does him no good.
But since the virtual machine needs to access the media through the (comprimised) host OS, the attacker can copy that data as well.
It sounds to me like this is just giving you a false sense of security.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Basically a USB hard-drive that auto configs ssh and your browser so novice users can access proxyies.
A very cool idea but only "secure" if you trust the company. They say they don't keep logs, but you never know. Also a yearly fee with a limit on transfer.
The ./ story, as well as the link (Portable Virtual Privacy Machine), say that it's 100% GPL, but at least the Mozilla parts (Firefox and Thunderbird) are under the Netscape Public License.
Should I believe anything else these folks say?
If it is using QEMU, then it's just another normal process with the same privileges (or lack thereof) as any other. QEMU's basically a PC emulator, albeit a pretty fast and compatible one.
There is the risk that processes on the host machine can peer at its memory and fish out the unencrypted data without any way of it knowing - unlikely that someone would develop such a thing, but if you're being paranoid there's always the possibility.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I was reading about something like this on a PC Magazine sometime ago called the stealthsurfer (http://www.stealthsurfer.biz/). I guess it's like this except that this one uses GPL software (stealthsurfer uses a personalized version of netscape 7)
Such approaches give you only limited protection: if you don't trust the systems you plug into, you may still be subject to key logging, screen recording and other attack.
RTFA: it's run on the qemu emulator. You first boot the host OS, and your qemu session is just a process under that, with no more rights than otherwise.
:-).
If you had a boot CD, now that would a problem. Would I let someone boot my laptop from Knoppix? Not unless I would trust them to sysadmin my laptop
As the above poster says, security accepted wisdom is that physical control implies vulnerability.
sigs, as if you care.
It would only work if the person was logged in and had access to the USB ports (which I understand some places are locking down now).
I don't believe that you can get a program to run at the login splash screen.
So shame on them for leaving their computer logged in.
I'm reading that headline thinking I finally have a cone of silence with tinted windows I can carry around, and it's just same dorky VM.
Sheesh. Next you'll tell me I still don't get my flying car and robot sex-slave^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmaid any time soon.
=)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I thought USB type keys were limited to 100k writes before failure. How many times or how long can you use this device before wearing out the key?
Apple free since 1990!
Good bye Carnivore?
James bond wants one of these. The FBI, when they finally figure out what this is, will want it banned. I have dreamed of doing something like this with an applet but this is much slicker and more powerful.
Next questions, can I tunnel through with VOIP? How "special" does my correspondent/recipient have to be for the trail for eavesdroppers to go cold on both ends of the connection?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Well, they've provided a torrent too, which seems quite well seeded for the moment. So, should not be a problem!
Okay, lemme get this straight.
You take this USB key and plug it into an untrusted machine (since, if you had a trusted machine, you wouldn't have to go through these hoops). It fires up a virtualized PC that runs Linux and lets you get out to the web using an encrypted proxy.
I fail to see the utility of this. You're running QEMU on the host. If the host is compromised (and it's best to assume that any untrusted host is), it has full access to your keystrokes, I/O, and the entire memory image of your system.
Good crypto software for Unix makes sure to prevent its sensitive data from going out to swap by negotiating with the virtual memory system. This keeps your passphrases and keys from showing up in a swapfile if the machine is compromised. This type of system has no control over that -- if the host decides to swap the emulator out, foom! your entire system image is now on disk. A disk you don't trust.
Not to mention that processes on the host could simply read through your memory in real time.
So, in short, an untrusted computer is still an untrusted computer. While this sounds useful for encrypting one's network connections, it seems like an awfully complex solution to reinvent the concept of a VPN.
Go into the BIOS settings, set a boot password, and then disable USB boot devices. No, it's not totally impenetrable, but it's better than nothing - at least your attacker will be forced to haul out a screwdriver. And for laptops, probably a soldering iron too, which sort of obviates a quick hit-and-run attack while you're away from your desk ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I just tried this on two reasonably modern machines, and it's slow as hell. Unusably slow. QEMU claims to be a 'FAST!' emulator. It is not.
Why not use Cygwin instead? Almost all of the apps in this distro has have been ported to cygwin, and I doubt there'd be much trouble porting Firefox if someone got serious about it.
A cygwin based distro could pack a minimal installation (including X) on a USB keyfob that would provide all of the same functionality, but running the apps as native code, at near native speed (minus the small cygwin/POSIX to win32 api translation penalty).
Now of course this solution won't work on a Linux machine, but I think it would be rare that you'd encounter a Linux machine that you'd want to run this on. Most likely you'd be at a friend's house, or in a computer lab where everything runs windows.
Last week I was thinking about exactly this question. I've been using VMware to do the same sort of thing form my laptop, but it has the disadvantage of being costly, non-portable (no easy or possibly legal installing to usb drives/etc.), and not pre-configured for the purpose of this VPM. But in my experience VMware is quicker, feeling almost like the emulated computer was the host computer.
At any rate, I installed and ran this VPM software, and it certainly seems to deliver, and has a very nice collection of pre-installed apps. Sadly the performance is about as poor as you might expect (that's running it off a HD, not a USB drive). Every operation takes a while to complete, click on Firefox, and wait 40 seconds for it to ask which profile you want to use (this is after first use). Type in a URL and wait at least 30 seconds for any signs that it's coming up. My laptop is only P4M 1.8Ghz, so no doubt performance would be much better on a more recent machine.
Still, pretty neat, though not entirely usable for me.
quincy
Don't vote for Eugene Papansanovich for Congress!
Please RTFBlurb. It uses QEMU to run on top of Windows or Linux. Therefore you do not circumvent the default OS.
Why do so many people continue to only use Squid/SSH for proxying when it is not required anymore? SSH supports dynamic port forwarding.
SSH basically includes a builtin socks proxy. Download putty and create a dynamic port on locahost:1080 and say goodbye squid.
Of course there are still advantages to having a local squid proxy, but in most cases it's not worth the effort anymore.
I read...
Secure, Portable, Virtual Piracy Machine
Dell is offering a 1GB Mini Cruzer for $50.96 after MIR. This should be plenty of storage for your needs. With 1GB at USB 2.0 speeds you can do more than use this as a toy. Link http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.a spx?sku=A0290872&c=us&l=en&cs=19&category_id=2999& page=external
IIRC, it doesn't apply here. The research was made on the JVM, showing that its security was vulnerable to gamma rays, etc, which isn't a big surprise. I'd expect the same for any other program. However, they also managed to craft their program in such a way to basically escalate the program's (class?) privilege level reliably. QEMU has different goals than JVM's security, and it being vulnerable to mutated data isn't more critical for it than any other program. You might be referring to another study. though; that's all IIRC.
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
"Unfortunately, that flash fob is of very limited lifespan."
That's not really a problem. Damnsmalllinux is a livecd distro and the concept is similar when you boot off a flashdrive. The boot media is mounted readonly and the OS actually runs in a ramdisk (these days it's called a shared memory filesystem). The only writes would be user data which is very little compared to the OS.
As far as disposing of a broken flashdrive, I'd say take a hammer to the thing and be sure to smash up the flash chips very well.
Uncompressed it is 122MB, a 128MB USB FOB would just make it with very little room for additional storage. 256MB would be more than enough.
Germany and The Netherlands are preparing Europian legislation to log every email message you send, to log every url you are visiting for at least a year "to fight terror".
:-)
Well, as opposed to other nations that are doing that, at least they are passing legislation...
Then how can it possibly be considered secure? You have no guarantees that what you see isn't being manipulated by the system you are running it from.
:)
Of course, you shouldn't be using someone else's computer anyway, god knows what kind of keyloggers or whatever it has lurking in it...