On Sat, Oct 13, 2018 at 08:35:09PM -0400, Steve Kinney wrote: > On 10/13/2018 08:42 AM, Mirimir wrote: > >> There is never "no" disk, just a matter of which ones > >> are plugged into the box, physically, or remotely. > > > > OK, I should have said "unless there _is_ no disk, as there _can be_ in > > Tails". I've run Tails (and my own LiveCDs) on diskless machines. And > > yes, using USB for live systems is iffy. But write-once CDs are pretty > > safe, I think. No? > > Well heck, CDs are cheap. Write once, use once, melt once. If your > trust in the Live CD vendor and the "trusted" device used to burn your > stack of Live OS CDs is well founded, and the device booted into has no > drive (or a power switch on the drive - a very trivial hack even with a > laptop), the only things left to worry about are undocumented debugging > modules on the CPU, and maybe undocumented BIOS or video chip features. > > If your activities present a target important enough to justify use of > TS/SCI techniques against you, your activities are probably important > enough to justify purchasing obsolete laptops in bulk and destroying > each after one use. "Fingerprint MY hardware will ya, you bastards? > HA! Take that!" Just sayin'.
Indeed. Chameleon HW ftw I guess - #OpenHW #OpenFabs Parameterizable everything - as in, every parameter which can be used to identify say a network device and any anomalies it might otherwise present to the world (clock skew, obvious MAC addy, any software/bios built into the network chip "hardware" and its parameters) and of course up the stack. > Everything depends largely on one's threat model. Who are your > potential adversaries, what are their potential resources, and what's > their cost/benefit ratio for doing what it takes to crack your system? > Educated guesses here establish parameters for reasonable defensive > measures also based on cost/benefit factors. Spoiler: For most of the > users most of the time, precautions beyond using a Live OS on a stick > don't make much sense. Ack. > Always consider that the cost of using information obtained via a > previously unsuspected attack vector includes a risk of exposing that > vector's existence. Parallel construction covers a multitude of sins > but not all of them, all of the time. > > :o)