Out in the Open: Inside the Operating System Edward Snowden Used to Evade the NSA

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

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

By Klint Finley
Wired.com
04.14.14

When NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden first emailed Glenn Greenwald, he 
insisted on using email encryption software called PGP for all 
communications. But this month, we learned that Snowden used another 
technology to keep his communications out of the NSA's prying eyes. It's 
called Tails. And naturally, nobody knows exactly who created it.

Tails is a kind of computer-in-a-box. You install it on a DVD or USB 
drive, boot up the computer from the drive and, voila, you're pretty close 
to anonymous on the internet. At its heart, Tails is a version of the 
Linux operating system optimized for anonymity. It comes with several 
privacy and encryption tools, most notably Tor, an application that 
anonymizes a user's internet traffic by routing it through a network of 
computers run by volunteers around the world.

Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura 
Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn't store any data locally. 
This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone 
from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That 
protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources.

"The installation and verification has a learning curve to make sure it is 
installed correctly," Poitras told WIRED by e-mail. "But once the set up 
is done, I think it is very easy to use."

[...]



--
Subscribe to InfoSec News
http://www.infosecnews.org/subscribe-to-infosec-news/