Tails 5.0~beta1: Call for testing
tails.boum.org
tails.boum.org
''heads is a GNU/Linux liveCD distribution aimed at people who like the aspect of controlling their privacy and anonymity on the Internet. You might have heard of Tails as a similar GNU/Linux distribution. heads was born as an answer to Tails, since Tails is using systemd as an init system and also contains non-free software.
In heads, the init of choice is not systemd. systemd is a huge piece of software that, while being free software, has not been audited for security since its creation. Being big as it is, it is hard to do so, and as time goes, it's becoming even tougher to audit systemd. We do not aim to disrespect or get into the controversy on why systemd is a bad choice. We just do not wish to use it.
Another important thing is that heads uses only free software, while Tails continues using non-free software. Non-free software can not be audited and as such cannot guarantee you security or anonymity.''
Latest version of heads is 4 years old so not sure how much security those developers can guarantee.
It needs an update desperately, but I think it's abandonware at this point.
Not sure that I want my clandestine activities running off a beta version of Tails. Let them iron out a few issues before I run the mainline version.
Presumably that means that it could detect known strings in raw memory from a known embedded list. I believe it would be unlikely to use network to obtain some kind of real time list, we would know about it if this was the case. It might be possible to push updated bad string lists embedded encrypted in firmware.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a world where the entire system is open from hardware on up. Unfortunately I don't know that we'll get there without some substantial shifts in humanity as a whole.
Or does company laptop prohibit this somehow?
I think this is less true to an extent in Europe, where at least some countries establish privacy rights to employees when using company equipment- at least when it comes to Internet browsing history and private emails. I'm not sure if creative works like personal side projects would also be protected.
Really though, when it comes to using company time or property for personal gain, the only real answer is "talk to your lawyer".
I am asking more from technical point of view, e.g. I guess the tech companies at least will have booting from usb blocked completely, or it triggers some bitlocker type lock
There's an apocryphal story of a security researcher who was tasked by a bank to break in if he could. He littered CD's around the parking lot (or was it USB drives? I forget) back when auto-run was a thing. Employees saw the disks on the ground, picked them up wondering what they were, and inserted them in their work computers to find out. Tada! Access granted. As such, Big Corporate companies (finance, insurance, retail, etc) tend to lock down their computers pretty hard... tech companies less so, I think.
Personally, I'd just take two laptops.
(checks)
ok, no. Too bad, they really should :-(
1. Devuan, Gentoo, AntiX, Slackware.
2. One doesn't have to fully get rid of systemd. It's "merely" a matter of breaking the dependencies on it, which is a rather small technical burden. A distribution could do that and barely notice (well, ok, other than the fact that it will now have to offer Unix'ish utilities it used to have and which systemd replaced; but those are optional too).
3. The more it expands to take over the entire lower part of userspace, the more it will squeeze out people who want to do work in that space. All those people are enough to sustain and grow a non-systemd ecosystem. I tend to assume developers will prefer it in the long run.
4. Longer-term: Non-monolithic dbus-utilizing lower-userspace facilities. These should be able to get to a state where one can switch from systemd to them with relative ease and without losing the useful capabilities of systemd. At least, that's according to my very rough understanding of things.