Recommendations, really security is more of a mindset than any particular software or hardware.

A windows XP computer that has never been connected to the computer is more secure than a hardened debian box. Air gaps can be crossed, but it's damn hard.

Read Schneier. Think a lot about your setup. Think about what you are trying to protect. Think about what you would like to protect in the future.

It is very different to protect crypto currency than to protect an email.

Remember the motto: Physical access equals root. Who has physical access to your machines?

Encourage this mindset in yourself and in others. Encryption is important, but 99.99% of the time of the most serious security breaches it will be an inside job, trusting the wrong person, or forgetting to change the physical locks.

To wrap it up: forget magic OS/hardware combo for now, start with air gap strategy if you want to do something useful, especially encouraging the right mindset in yourself.

For the ultimate solutions, which is probably decades, we might have to build up defences from the atomic on up. And we'll probably still use air gaps. (Despite air full of nano machines. Gah!)


On Jan 2, 2014, at 10:09 AM, Manfred Karrer wrote:

> Impressive statement!
>
> Your very work could be a part of a fixed internet. Maybe we cannot fight against that enourmous power at the moment but if we make the shift to an internet where security is ubiquitous we would hurt at least their efficiency. To spy with hardware or postal interception will cause them much higher costs. And open source hardware should become ubiquitous as well...
>
> Maybe the only good thing about that all is that it force people to wake up to become aware and to use the tools which are already existing even if they are hard to use.
> For me at least I have the intention to switch over to the better systems taking in account the cost of loosing some convenience.
>
> So can anyone give me some advices for a recommended secure system?
> OS: fedora, SELinux, ubuntu?
> Hardware: any recommendation for open source hardware? desktop & laptop
> Phone: cryptophone? ubuntu seems to be not really ready for use yet... can you config android to become trustful?
>
> I know there is a lot to find about that in the web, but I am sure some of you guys have first hand experience and could shorten my investigations....
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Another idea is to force our government/justice to become at least aware of these violations of our privacy and property (as alternative channel of defense):
> If we had a tool which reports us attacks to our computer and prints that into a form which could be handed over as a law report against an unknown criminal our justice system should become forced to handle that. I am not expecting any real results out of that, but it could help to bring the issue to their awareness and in theory they need to react and work for us.
>
>
> Am 02.01.2014 um 17:33 schrieb Caleb James DeLisle <cjd@???>:
>
>> I went to the 30th annual Chaos Communications Congress.
>>
>> I had known about the Congress since I was a young teen but because of the rules
>> surrounding photography, without being there you just don't know what really goes
>> on.
>>
>> Although I cannot ever say whether this Congress was special, something about it
>> felt historic.
>>
>> It was at a time when the people were beginning to wake up. When the abuses of
>> the NSA, and more generally the Five Eyes Alliance, went from the wild ramblings
>> of conspiracy theorists to words printed in the daily newspaper.
>>
>> I was there when Julian Assange spoke by video link of the obligations of
>> the system administrators who watch over these machines of oppression.
>>
>> When I heard him begin to speak, whatever I had been doing before lost it's
>> importance. Before even knowing who it was that was talking, I was drawn in by
>> the power and compassion in his words. As I found myself crowding in around the
>> laptop which streamed the speech to the now-silent room and it was then that I
>> knew what it must have felt like when, not 80 years ago, people stood silently
>> around their radio sets, realizing that the war had begun.
>>
>> I was there when Jacob Appelbaum presented newly published leaks which showed the
>> Five Eyes to be even more dark and ambitious than I could have believed.
>>
>> I had imagined the them as a group of passive data collectors. Tapping wires,
>> collecting phone calls and reading email. I had a romantic image of them
>> stopping once we just began to encrypt all data. Somehow I had convinced myself
>> that they would simply recognize that the insecurity was gone and their job was
>> over.
>>
>> This weekend I was forced to face the reality that it was never about the
>> information, it's about the control. The compromise and virus development, the use
>> of third party computers to attack victim networks, the derailing of efforts to
>> build secure systems and even the intentional planting of security
>> vulnerabilities. Taken together it added up to one thing, a deliberate campaign
>> of Invasion and Occupation, all so that their flag, whatever it may be, would
>> secretly fly inside of every electronic device in the world.
>>
>> As these revelations began to hit home, I was struck by the historical
>> significance of the time and place I was in. Here I was, standing on ground
>> which had only one lifetime ago been The Third Riche, and as the people were just
>> becoming aware of the new war, it had arguably become the intellectual capital of
>> The Free World.
>>
>> I was there when the terrible news broke of the bombings in Russia. As the country
>> which had bravely chosen to protect Edward Snowden was made powerless to protect
>> even it's own citizens and as the British and American media were given some
>> distraction from the breaking news about their own intelligence agencies, my
>> conspiratorial mind could not help but see why so many governments were afraid of
>> letting Snowden in.
>>
>> This weekend I was dragged back to a world which I thought I had left. In my late
>> teens, I had taken it upon myself to investigate every conspiracy theory, every
>> crazy alien story and every piece of disinformation which sat about the Internet.
>> As a bright eyed ambitious kid with an insatiable appetite for knowledge, I was
>> cautioned by a wise history teacher. He said I should beware of knowing everything,
>> for to know how the world works would make me cynical like he was.
>>
>> Sometimes in a dark place, I envy the naive innocence of the people I see in
>> passing. Their life defined through their job, their car, their clothes, their
>> phone, the TV and their husband or wife. But if ever there was a blue pill which
>> would make the truth go away, so that I could be like them again, would I take it?
>> For better or worse, the answer has always been no.
>>
>> I was there, behind the veil of the photography ban, I saw the swimming pool filled
>> with styrofoam peanuts with people jumping in and playing around. I saw the tubes
>> which snaked all over the building, where people could send messages with compressed
>> air from vacuum cleaners. I saw the projects done by the various hacker groups, I saw
>> the quad-copters, the 3d printers, the lights, the music, the artwork and the play.
>> I visited the coffee nerds table, brewed my own Saturday morning coffee and learned
>> about a different type of coffee press. Everywhere I went there was an ora of love,
>> trust and commonality and even though we all knew the stakes were high, it felt as
>> though we were on the right side of history. It felt as though we had the power to
>> create the society we wanted to live in, the power to reach into the heart of what
>> is seemingly such a hopeless situation and just change it, by doing nothing other
>> than that for which we were born.
>>
>>
>> tl;dr I went to a meeting and it seemed important
>>
>>
>>
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