*************************************************************** Security-news A security bulletin for autonomous resistance movements Produced by the folks who bring you http://security.tao.ca *************************************************************** January 13, 2003 We know it has been awhile since the last issue of security-news, our apologies for that. With war hysteria ramping up, the forced registration of arab americans (& their subsequent arrests and potential deportations), and the incursion of the state security apparatus into every aspect of our lives... there couldn't be a more pressing time for informed and rational discussion on activist security needs. Some organizers in Vancouver, BC are putting on a conference in May that will touch on many of the themes addressed in issues of security-news and at security.tao.ca. We have included their conference call-out below. As always, we could use submissions to security-news as it makes our job a lot easier to get the information out there when it is sent out way. Submissions can be sent to secure@resist.ca as always. ********************************** Security-news: Issue #11 - Contents ********************************** * Security tip of the week: PGP 8.0 - RSA Keys * Events: Activist Security Conference - Callout * News & Analysis: Peace Groups Monitored by RCMP Secret Police * News & Analysis: New Tools for Domestic Spying, & Qualms (part 1 of 2) * How to: Data security for Linux power users (part 2 of 2) ***** Security Tip of the Week: PGP 8.0 - RSA Keys ***** In case you missed this, PGP 8.0 is now realeased and there is a freeware version for mail and file encryption available at pgp.com (there is, however, no free version of PGP disk anymore for users of Windows XP or Macintosh OSX which is crummy). Our tip is to make sure when creating RSA keys in the new PGP 8.0 to select the "RSA Legacy Key" option if you want anyone with an earlier version of PGP to be able to use your RSA key. If you create a plain RSA key in the new version, people with older versions of PGP can't use them. ***** Events: ACTIVIST SECURITY CONFERENCE, VANCOUVER BC, MAY 9-11 ***** The Resist! Collective in Vancouver, BC is putting out this draft conference call to gather interested parties and supporters together to plan an Activist Security Conference for May, 2003. What we would like you to do is read the preliminary ideas we have put together (with help from friends from other organizations), and let us know if you are interested in helping us organize this conference, speaking at it, providing training or anything else. We are also looking for progressive groups to endorse, or co-sponsor this event. We will be setting up an organizing mailing list this week, and having our first face-to-face meeting of local organizers to discuss local logistics. Please let us know if you are interested in organizing locally or just interested in helping to shape the conference and develop curricula via the email list. Individuals who wish to be on the mailing list must be vouched for by an organization or individual who is familiar to us in order to cut down on disruption attempts by outside parties. Please email secure@resist.ca if you wish to be added to the mailing list or have suggestions, ideas, or comments. The Resist! Collective is committed to organizing the local logistics of such a conference but we need YOU! to make the content of such an event. Please respond to this soon so we can start to organize with as many people involved as possible. WHAT: Activist Security - A Conference (to be given a better name shortly) WHEN: May 9-11th, 2003 WHERE: Vancouver, British Columbia WHO: Security trainers (tech and non-tech), system administrators, legal collectives, copwatch and anti-police brutality groups, and activists interested in training and getting trained in these areas. WHY: As far as we know, there has never been an activist conference focussing on security for our movements. In the past two years, our world has rapidly changed for the worse, and security issues have become more important to activist communities as the long arm of the state continues to grow. An activist security conference would provide an opportunity for progressive security trainers, and activists from across North America to meet and skill-share as well as discuss issues and ideas on these themes. POTENTIAL STRUCTURE: We see that there are three very strong areas that we would like to develop workshops, discussions, training and skill sharing around: * TECHNOLOGY: Secure system-administration, Communications security, Electronics, Encryption, Echelon & Carnivore, Bugs and taps etc. * ACTIVIST TRAINING: User-end security. How to communicate securely, security culture, securing our communities (copwatch etc), law-enforcement bodies and operations. * LEGAL: The Patriot Act (US) and Bill C-36 (Canada), how evolving laws are affecting activism, the world post-911 and our rights, the pros and cons of court challenges. This is *not* an exhaustive list of topics, but simply a place to start the discussions of the conference from. Please help us by letting us know what workshop/skillshare you would be interested in doing and what resources you need to be able to do it. SOME LOGISTICAL ISSUES: It is unlikely we will be able to do much fundraising to put this conference together but we will try. If you know of any potential funding sources, please put us in touch. Generally we will try to do this on the cheap, asking for a registration fee to cover costs on location - and trying to billet people with local activists. We are currently looking into space possibilities and costs in Vancouver. For further information, discussion, to be added to the mailing list or anything else, please contact: secure@resist.ca Thanks! We want to get the ball rolling on this ASAP so please reply soon. In solidarity and struggle, The Resist! Collective ***** News & Analysis: PEACE GROUPS MONITORED BY RCMP SECRET POLICE Posted to: http://vancouver.indymedia.org Friday, January 10, 2003 ***** PEACE GROUPS MONITORED BY RCMP SECRET POLICE: FIGHT BACK WITH THEIR SECRET INFORMATION http://www.peace.ca/peacegroupsmonitored.htm All across Canada, in cities and towns, the RCMP monitored peace groups they considered subversive to the proper order of society. Any protest was monitored as the Government feared all organized opposition. The RCMP would even break & enter premises in order to gather material for the inclusion in their files on protest groups. Many of the RCMP Security Service (SS) files were transferred to the National Archives of Canada (NAC). This means that secret RCMP files on protest groups ARE NOW AVAILABLE TO YOU! All you have to do is request the files from the National Archives, and you will be able to prove the wrong-doings and civil rights violations by the RCMP which went unchecked for decades, and continue today under CSIS. Now, before you become all worried that this takes lots of time and money and knowledge, let us assure you that it does not. Requests can be, and often are, hand-written. Although forms for making requests are available from public libraries and government offices, they are not required. It costs $5.00 to apply for files on groups and activities. In the event that they are not forthcoming with the files, making a complaint to the Information Commissioners is free, and can be hand-written in one sentence. Such simple complaints are often all that is required to finally get files. It need only state that you are dissatisfied with the response of the NAC, and that you would like the Commissioner to investigate and get more material released. The Commissioners will do the rest. In Ottawa, go to the NAC Reference Room and view the public RG146 finding aids for the secret files. There are hundreds of pages of lists of groups and activities and protests which were observed and noted by the RCMP undercover agents and their moles and snitches. If you are not in Ottawa, you should ask the NAC to make a copy of the finding aid available to you in your city through the office of your local Member of Parliament. These files can be accessed by anyone. An electronic version of the AIA request form is available at: http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/ip/infosource/Info_6/Request-Frms_e.html Simply make a request in writing, using the form or letter, by mail, and include $5.00 per file part, to: Access to Information Coordinator National Archives of Canada 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0N3 tel. (613) 947-1532/954-4142 fax. (613) 992-9350 Simply state that you request access to an RCMP file under the Access Act (AIA) of Canada. Just describe in as much detail as possible the records you seek. It is best to have gone through the RCMP finding aid (RG146) at the NAC first; this way you will be able to quote the file reference. However, you could simply give the name and location of the protest group, and have the NAC look it up for you. Then add $5.00 and send it to the NAC. The NAC then has 30 days under the AIA to respond, and they will not meet this deadline, so you must immediately, on day 31, write a letter of delay complaint to the Information Commissioner, stating that the NAC is in a deemed refusal (late) position. Make the complaint soon, as it will help force the release of information. Simply state your name, address and the fact that the NAC has not properly responded to your request. You must write to the Commissioner and say that your request was not done in the required time limit, and/or that the response did not include all the requested records, and/or that the response was heavily and unjustly severed: Information Commissioner of Canada 300-112 Kent Street, Ottawa, ON, K1A 1H3 tel. (613) 995-9976/995-2410 fax. (613) 947-7294 http://infoweb.magi.com/~accessca/oic.html Eventually, and you can wait a year for an initial release, some documents will show up in your post-box. Remember to give the NAC a new address if you move. At least 50% of the material in the subject files will have been deleted by CSIS before it is released by the NAC. Immediately complain to the Commissioner (see above) about the unreasonable deletions, and that office will undertake an investigation which will hopefully result in the NAC releasing more documents. You do not have to justify the reason for the deletions, as this was not your fault. Just complain! Many researchers have had to make multiple requests and ask for multiple investigations by the Commissioner in order to finally access much of the files. Last, if you are interested in current (1984-1999) secret police files about a group, you should consider writing to the RCMP and CSIS and requesting a file release under AIA. You will note that the RCMP still show up at all demonstrations, and were certainly active in monitoring peace and protest groups long after that function was to have been transferred to CSIS. Using the method described above, simply write or fax, and send $5.00 to: Canadian Security Intelligence Service Mr. Garnet Barlow, Access Coordinator PO Box 9732, Ottawa, Postal Terminal Ottawa, ON, K1G 4G4 tel. (613) 231-0107, fax. (613) 842-1271 toll free 1-877-995-9903 Royal Canadian Mounted Police Access to Information Coordinator Access to Information Department 1200 Vanier Parkway Ottawa, ON, K1A 0R2 tel. (613) 993-5162, fax. (613) 993-5080 PEACE and PROTEST GROUPS MONITORED by the RCMP Notes: the first number (between 697 and 801) is the volume number, and should be used in the request. The number following the file name refers to the number of file parts for each title. If there is no number, then there is only one file part. The largest has some 50 file parts. If you want the file on End the Arms Race from Vancouver, then ask for: RG146, Volume 697, End the Arms Race Committee, Vancouver , 2 file parts. Send the NAC $10.00 for the two AIA file requests. For a full list of organizations and their RCMP file numbers - go to http://www.peace.ca/peacegroupsmonitored.htm ***** News & Analysis: New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms By MICHAEL MOSS and FORD FESSENDEN December 10, 2002 (Part 1 of 2 - next part in the next issue of security-news) ***** When the Federal Bureau of Investigation grew concerned this spring that terrorists might attack using scuba gear, it set out to identify every person who had taken diving lessons in the previous three years. Hundreds of dive shops and organizations gladly turned over their records, giving agents contact information for several million people. "It certainly made sense to help them out," said Alison Matherly, marketing manager for the National Association of Underwater Instructors Worldwide. "We're all in this together." But just as the effort was wrapping up in July, the F.B.I. ran into a two-man revolt. The owners of the Reef Seekers Dive Company in Beverly Hills, Calif., balked at turning over the records of their clients, who include Tom Cruise and Tommy Lee Jones - even when officials came back with a subpoena asking for "any and all documents and other records relating to all noncertified divers and referrals from July 1, 1999, through July 16, 2002." Faced with defending the request before a judge, the prosecutor handling the matter notified Reef Seekers' lawyer that he was withdrawing the subpoena. The company's records stayed put. "We're just a small business trying to make a living, and I do not relish the idea of standing up against the F.B.I.," said Ken Kurtis, one of the owners of Reef Seekers. "But I think somebody's got to do it." In this case, the government took a tiny step back. But across the country, sometimes to the dismay of civil libertarians, law enforcement officials are maneuvering to seize the information-gathering weapons they say they desperately need to thwart terrorist attacks. From New York City to Seattle, police officials are looking to do away with rules that block them from spying on people and groups without evidence that a crime has been committed. They say these rules, forced on them in the 1970's and 80's to halt abuses, now prevent them from infiltrating mosques and other settings where terrorists might plot. At the same time, federal and local police agencies are looking for systematic, high-tech ways to root out terrorists before they strike. In a sense, the scuba dragnet was cumbersome, old-fashioned police work, albeit on a vast scale. Now officials are hatching elaborate plans for dumping gigabytes of delicate information into big computers, where it would be blended with public records and stirred with sophisticated software. In recent days, federal law enforcement officials have spoken ambitiously and often about their plans to remake the F.B.I. as a domestic counterterrorism agency. But the spy story has been unfolding, quietly and sometimes haltingly, for more than a year now, since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some people in law enforcement remain unconvinced that all these new tools are needed, and some experts are skeptical that high-tech data mining will bring much of value to light. Still, civil libertarians increasingly worry about how law enforcement might wield its new powers. They say the nation is putting at risk the very thing it is fighting for: the personal freedoms and rights embodied in the Constitution. Moreover, they say, authorities with powerful technology will inevitably blunder, as became evident in October when an audit revealed that the Navy had lost nearly two dozen computers authorized to process classified information. What perhaps angers the privacy advocates most is that so much of this revolution in police work is taking place in secret, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented Reef Seekers. "If we are going to decide as a country that because of our worry about terrorism that we are willing to give up our basic privacy, we need an open and full debate on whether we want to make such a fundamental change," Ms. Cohn said. But some intelligence experts say that in a changed world, the game is already up for those who would value civil liberties over the war on terrorism. "It's the end of a nice, comfortable set of assumptions that allowed us to keep ourselves protected from some kinds of intrusions," said Stewart A. Baker, the National Security Agency's general counsel under President Bill Clinton. Tearing Down a Wall The most aggressive effort to give local police departments unfettered spying powers is taking place in New York City. It was there 22 years ago that the police, stung by revelations of widespread abuse, agreed to stop spying on people not suspected of a crime. The agreement was part of a containment wall of laws, regulations, court decisions and ordinances erected federally and in many parts of the country in the 70's and 80's. The F.B.I.'s spying authority was restricted, and the United States' foreign intelligence agencies got out of the business of domestic spying altogether. States passed their own laws. On the local level, ordinances and consent decrees were enacted not just in New York but also in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. In the years since, these strictures have "become part of the culture," Mr. Baker said. But the wall is under attack. Last month, a special appeals court ruled that the sweeping antiterrorism legislation known as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, enacted shortly after the September 2001 attacks to give the government expanded terror-fighting capacity, freed federal prosecutors to seek wiretap and surveillance authority in the absence of criminal activity. In Chicago last year, a federal appeals court threw out the agreement that restricted police surveillance. Some officials in Seattle would like to follow suit, saying they are effectively sidelined in the terrorism war. In New York, the Police Department has sued in federal court in Manhattan to end the consent decree the department signed in 1980 to end a civil rights lawsuit over the infiltration of political groups. Attorney General John Ashcroft and New York's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, say the wall is a relic - unnecessary and, worse, dangerous. David Cohen, the former deputy director of central intelligence who is now the Police Department's deputy commissioner for intelligence, argues that the consent decree's requirement of a suspicion of criminal activity prevents officers from infiltrating mosques. "In the last decade, we have seen how the mosque and Islamic institutes have been used to shield the work of terrorists from law enforcement scrutiny by taking advantage of restrictions on the investigation of First Amendment activity," Mr. Cohen said in an affidavit. The police in other cities cite the same need. "We're prohibited from collecting things that will make us a safer city," said Lt. Ron Leavell, commander of the criminal intelligence division of the Seattle police. Mr. Cohen did not argue in his affidavit that the authorities, if unshackled, could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks. But he did suggest that the F.B.I.'s failure to dig more deeply into the information it had before the attacks turned on agents' fears that they could not climb the wall. "The recent disclosure that F.B.I. field agents were blocked from pursuing an investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui because officials in Washington did not believe there was sufficient evidence of criminal activity to support a warrant points out how one person's judgment in applying an imprecise test may result in the costly loss of critical intelligence," Mr. Cohen said. Mr. Cohen has also asked that his testimony before the federal court be given in secret, unheard even by opposing lawyers. Last week, a judge told New York City that it needed to present better arguments to justify such extraordinary secrecy. Civil libertarians, frustrated that they cannot draw the other side into a debate, argue that questions about the need for such expanded powers are critical, and far from answered. "Who said you have to destroy a village in order to save it?" asked Jethro Eisenstein, one of the lawyers who negotiated the original consent decree. "We're protecting freedom and democracy, but unfortunately freedom and democracy have to be sacrificed." Even the police are far from unanimous about how intrusive they must be. The Chicago police, who have been free from their consent decree for nearly two years, say they have yet to use the new power. The Los Angeles police have made no effort to change their guidelines. "I have not heard complaints that the antiterrorist division has been inhibited in its work," said Joe Gunn, executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission. A joint Congressional inquiry into intelligence failures before Sept. 11 concluded that the failures had less to do with the inability of authorities to gather information than with their inability to analyze, understand, share and act on it. "The lesson of Moussaoui was that F.B.I. headquarters was telling the field office the wrong advice," said Eleanor Hill, staff director of the inquiry. "Fixing what happened in this case is not inconsistent with preserving civil liberties." `It Smacks of Big Brother' The Congressional inquiry's lingering criticism has added impetus to a movement within government to equip terror fighters with better computer technology. If humans missed the clues, the reasoning goes, perhaps a computer will not. ***** How to: Data security for Linux power users By Thomas C Greene in Washington 07/11/2002 - https://theregister.co.uk ***** (we ran the first security howto on this topic in issue #10 of security-news) A couple of months ago I wrote a security howto for Linux newbies, the goal of which was to help people achieve decent security using easy and safe techniques. Now it's time to address you power users out there, by which I mean people comfortable with the command line, using a text editor from the console, and tweaking configuration files -- people confident enough in their ability to recover from unpleasant surprises to take a bit of risk with their systems in the interest of securing their data and their privacy. I'll get into the Linux home network soon in a forthcoming article with our John Lettice. For now I'll concentrate on data hygiene and on-line anonymity. Why? because your Linux box is literally peppered with data traces indicating the Web sites you've visited, the files you've uploaded and downloaded, and every file you've recently accessed. You think encryption is the way to go? Think again. It's only as private as your passphrase is strong. It may be impractical for a remote attacker to crack it, but a brute-force attack is quite plausible for someone who has physical possession of your box and plenty of time. Like a police forensics lab, say. We used to worry chiefly about people in neurotic countries like China and Saudi Arabia, where the mere possession of forbidden information or politically inconvenient materials can result in criminal action. But now, in the wake of the 9/11 atrocity, we in the enlightened West have narrowed the gap. In Europe there is a movement underway to mandate data retention for all carriers. In the USA electronic surveillance orders which used to require a judge's approval are now available for the asking. Black bag jobs are going mainstream. Librarians have been conscripted into rat duty for the Ashcroft/Ridge Black and Tans, and risk prosecution if they so much as whisper about the loathsome things they're now forced to do in the name of Homeland Security. A recent report by the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court of appeals found that the FBI had lied like children about their evidence on over seventy recent occasions to get surveillance warrants they weren't entitled to, and that all happened before 9/11. Western governments are exploiting 9/11, making every move towards authoritarianism that they can get away with, and will only continue to test the waters and grant themselves ever more authority to regulate our lives and supervise our private affairs. The convenient myth of cyber-terrorism is never far removed from the rhetoric of bureaucrats and politicians. The momentum is all wrong, and building steadily. So for these reasons we need strict data privacy and on-line anonymity. Unfortunately, the Internet and the personal computer are designed for the storing and exchanging of data, not for its security. You think your Linux box is somehow more secure than a Windows machine? Think again. The beauty of Linux is its modularity; but this is also its curse. There are so many possible configurations that securing it is considerably more challenging than securing Windows (though the ultimate result will be better if you know what you're doing). Therefore we'll be dealing with only one filesystem, only one browser, only one desktop. To attempt more would require me to write a book, not an article. Forget journaling Everyone is talking about the journaling file systems for Linux: ext3, ReiserFS, XFS and JFS, etc. If uptime is job one for you, these are the way to go (my personal faves from a performance POV are Reiser and JFS, incidentally). But if security and data hygiene are your priorities, then there is only one way to go: ext2. The journal is a little treasure chest of data about your data. Get rid of it. Now, Reiser, XFS and JFS are designed for performance, and they really do deliver -- JFS in particular IMHO. But consider that they need memory and that this is a significant performance issue for Linux. Some of what you'll lose in data access speed will come back to you in the form of freed RAM, so it's not quite as sad a choice as some would have you believe. Furthermore it is rock solid. But yes, ext2 is generally slower and takes forever to recover from a crash. But if security is your first priority this is a no-brainer. I'll be providing a few homebrew tools for secure data wiping below, but I really can't recommend them on any other filesystem. Unless you're using ext2 you won't be able to exploit them fully. KDE I use KDE, as I hope all you happy Tuxers out there do. If you don't, then I'm not going to be able to help you as much as I'd like; but read on anyway -- there's a lot you can use below. KDE stores an absurd amount of data. Did you think that by disabling the recently-accessed files menu on your desktop via the KDE Control Center you'd no longer have a record of them stored on your machine? I hate to break it to you but KDE dutifully records all of it in a directory called /home/youraccountname/.kde/apps/share/RecentDocuments. Just wipe everything in that directory and change its permissions to read-only. Problem solved. Oh, but there is so much more. Go to /home/youraccountname/.kde/share/apps/ and start nosing around. The sub-directories I'd be most concerned with here are /RecentDocuments, /kbear, /kcookiejar, /konqueror, /krusader, and /noatun. In /konqueror you'll find several files, some of which need to be opened and given the 'select all/delete/save' treatment and their permissions set to read-only, in particular faviconrc and konq_history. I assume you're not foolish enough to bookmark 'dangerous' sites, so leave bookmarks.xml alone for convenience. You can always use Google as a way of avoiding bookmarking and of avoiding typing in the browser's address bar when you're surfing on the wild side. But I can't recommend konqueror as a secure browser because I haven't figured out where it keeps your URL address-bar history (greping for this is going to take days on my machine, sorry), and cookies are not as easily managed as with Mozilla, which we'll be dealing with in detail presently. I haven't used kbear but I suspect that the directory will contain all the details of your uploading and downloading history, so get into that subdirectory and start reading, and if this info is stored give each file the 'select all/delete/save' treatment and set the permissions to read-only. Do the same for any suspicious file in any of the sub-directories mentioned above. /noatun has a file called splitplaylist.xml which can get you into incredible hot water if you've ever opened a KP flick accidentally during your neverending pr0n quest. Now go into /home/youraccountname/.kde/share/cache and do exactly the same as I described above: delete text and change permissions with a vengeance. If you're one of those devil-may-care studs who works exclusively from the root account, then just do all this in /root/.kde/etc... 'Zilla I have a longstanding love/hate relationship with Mozilla. I use it exclusively and accept it willingly, warts and all. It is buggy. It is also quite easy to configure for maximum data privacy and on-line anonymity. But of course you do have to configure it. Let's assume you've installed the latest stable build (and if you haven't, you should). Here are my tips for making it tolerably secure: Go to Edit/Preferences in the drop-down menus and do a thorough walk-through along these lines. Start with Navigator/History. Select zero for "Remember visited pages for the last X days." Clear the location bar history, and come back and do that often. Now go to Helper Applications and disable everything. Next go to Smart Browsing and disable everything. Go to Downloads and tick "Don't open anything." Next go to Mail & Newsgroups and disable everything. Kmail is the only client I recommend for the home user. It imports gnupg easily and defaults to a plain-text display which thwarts worms and malicious scripts. Stick with it unless you really know what you're doing. Now head into Privacy & Security and start with Cookies. Choose "Enable cookies for the originating site only" which thwarts third-party advertisers, and set "Limit maximum lifetime" to "Current session only." Don't worry about cookie-borne passwords, which will be lost whenever you close the browser. You can save some of them (not crucial ones like those for your bank accounts) with the Password Manager. You definitely don't want cookies piling up on your machine. They can reveal your entire browsing history. While you're mucking about here go to "Manage stored cookies" and delete all of them. Do this regularly. Now go to Images and restrict them to those originating from the Web site you're visiting. Magically, a score of irritating advertisements will disappear from your surfing experience. This is also excellent for those times when you want to use the Google cache as a proxy. You won't be fetching images from the ultimate target site and you will therefore not show up in their server logs. When accessing controversial sites it's always a good idea to search via Google and to view only cached pages. This prevents the site name from appearing in your bookmarks, URL history and favicons list; and the Images trick above prevents you from making direct contact. Restricting your cookies to the originating Web site means that only Google will plant one; and setting them to expire with each browser session will prevent the notorious Google cookie from swelling and storing your comings and goings over time. Now go to Pop-ups and reject. Go to Forms and do the same: forget about storing this data; it's evil. You can go to Passwords and store those that aren't important. For example, my login information for the New York Times is stored. Of course my NYT profile identifies me as a 76-year-old Ethiopian grandmother of eight with a keen interest in fine wines and fast cars ;-) Now go to Advanced and disable Java. Go to Advanced/Scripts & Plugins and disable everything there. If you need to use these viral items you can enable them temporarily but you should run without them as much as you can. Now go to Cache. Enable the memory cache and give it as much as you can reasonably spare. Set the disk cache size to zero. While you're about it, click on the button to clear the disk cache. (Later we'll verify that it's empty and make it a read-only file.) The cache is important; it can store immense volumes of your surfing history including images, some of which may be verboten. It is possible in the USA and other neurotic nations to bust any poor bugger for KP possession merely on the basis of images stored in the browser cache. That you may have been deceived into following a link to some sicko Web site will do you no good in court. Child-protective hysteria reigns and you need to protect yourself from it. Finally, go to Networking/Debug and disable the disk cache and enable the memory cache. I don't know what effect this has but it seems prudent. With this setup you're going to have problems with aggressively viral Web sites like MSN and Hotmail which demand all sorts of access to your machine in exchange for the privilege of visiting them. You will have to adjust your cookie, Java and JavaScript permissions for each visit and then restore them when you're finished. You can create a separate profile for occasional unsafe browsing if you wish. Or you can just stay away from these sites, which is what I do. If I can't access a Web site with tight browser settings, then I figure the site in question doesn't need my business. If enough people did this they'd soon ease up on their Java, JS and ActiveX requirements. Now, Mozilla will have graciously recorded your entire http and ftp download history, so we'll need to deal with that. Go to /home/youraccountname/.mozilla/yourprofilename/whatever the next directory is and find downloads.rdf. Give it the old select all/delete/save treatment and make it read-only. Have a look at what's inside history.dat and history.mab. If you don't like what you see, do the same with them. Now go to the subdirectory /Cache and wipe everything inside it. Make this directory read-only too. Snoop around in the /.mozilla directory tree and wipe and/or make read-only any file or directory that makes you even vaguely uneasy. Don't just delete directories. Many of them may be re-created by the application (this is true for KDE too). It's better to empty them and make them read-only. Some files may also have to be present for the app to run properly. Here again, deleting the contents and making it read-only is the better way to go. For information on using proxies for additional on-line anonymity, and numerous other tips, see our previous Linux security article. One last tip: your bash history is a significant convenience that I would hate to see you do without. But pay attention to your commands. Ones like shred -z /home/me/docs/atomic_bombmaking.pdf or DaddyRapesSister.avi are not particularly healthy to keep in history. When it comes to file wipes the GUI is actually safer, and I would recommend using Krusader so there's no history of which files you've shredded. Wiping Now we have a few problems. For maximum security I advise using a non-journaling fs, and I also advise strapping on extra RAM in lieu of using a swap partition. Of course we can wipe the swap partition occasionally; and we can wipe the unused space on our active partitions. Unfortunately there's nothing I know of that will securely wipe the file slack-space on an active Linux fs (readers feel free to come to the rescue here); but I have dashed off three shell scripts which will securely wipe, according to your needs, an entire disk and its contents, only the unused space on an active disk, or a swap partition. I would like to have integrated the script which wipes free space with the one which wipes the swap partition, but the former can be run safely in the background while the disk is in use, while wiping the swap partition may cause applications to crash. It needs to be run separately from the console with nothing else going on. Obviously, wiping an entire disk is something you do from a boot floppy or from a separate HDD in preparation for a new tabula rasa sort of installation. These routines take an incredible amount of time, up to 48 hours for an entire disk of say, 40GB. With the WipeFree script we're overwriting the unused disk space in /root, /var, /home and /tmp with random data, and then overwriting that with zeroes to conceal the fact that we wiped it in the first place. With the WipeAll script we're devastating an entire HDD in basically the same way, but overwriting all data. With the WipeSwap script we're eliminating the contents of an entire swap partition, but I do recommend setting up a Linux box with no swap partition if you can afford enough RAM. I am not aware of any Linux app that absolutely requires disk swapping, though with Windows several will fail to load without disk swapping no matter how much RAM you have (e.g., Photoshop). Each of the scripts would be quite easy to run from the command line. There's no magic here. I'm not a programmer and I don't play one on TV. I've scripted them simply for convenience. For example, you might wish to run WipeFree.sh before going to bed and expect to rise after it's finished. If you did the same from the command line you'd have to wake every three hours or so to switch directories. There are caveats for WipeFree.sh. There is no wiping of file slack space. Using it on a journaling fs is not secure since the journal maintains data about your data. Even using it on an non-journaling fs is only effective if you're truly paranoid and proactive. Your own bad habits can easily defeat it. And then there's the slack space problem. 'Trust nothing, fear nothing' is the best security mantra I can offer. In any event you can download the utilities here. If anyone (like a real programmer, say) wishes to assist me in improving them, by all means please contact me. ® *************************************************************** Security-news Good computer security is no substitute for good sense! 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