Secure Computing HowTo – For OS X and Windows?

June 3rd, 2006 · 1 Comment

I’m going to be setting this up on my iPod, it’s a nice configuration but is only Windows compatable. You don’t need a USB stick if you already have an MP3 player that has enough spare storage.

What I want is a version of this for Windows and OS X, when TrueCrypt eventually comes out with its OS X client it will be easy, until then cross compatability is not possible using these programs. If TrueCrypt could be replaced by a cross compatible encryption app then it would be all good. CCrypt has the binaries for both OS but it is command line and only encrypts files. Unlike TrueCrypt it offers no stenography.

The meta mind of slashdot has had two goes at coming up with an answer to the question of cross OS encryption, one and two, they failed. We’re all waiting on TrueCrypt.

We’ve got to decide right away what level of paranoia we want to have. If we just want to provide cover traffic for the folks in repressive countries, and don’t care about our own privacy, we can get away with just installing a program like Freenet or TOR. Otherwise, we should go about creating our own private environment using my favorite privacy tool, the 1GB USB Key.

By making and using the following USB key setup, you ensure:

o Your web surfing patterns are much more difficult to monitor
o Your email is safe from massive snooping
o Your possession of the software is deniable – even when you give someone the password for your key and your actual key
o Cover traffic for people and human rights workers in oppressive regimes
o Freedom of thought everywhere (Hopefully)

Go out and buy yourself a USB key. To anonymize just your web surfing and email, you’ll only need a key that’s at least 64 MB. If you want to keep hidden files on your key, such as documents, or pictures, you’ll need to go as big as you can afford. A 1 gigabyte USB key should be enough for every text file you’d want to transport handily, unless you’re also transporting libraries of images or video. In which case, go even bigger.

Download the following files:

TrueCrypt
TorPark
Portable Thunderbird w/ Enigmail & GPG
Portable Gaim (Optional, for Encrypted Instant Messenger)
Portable Abiword (Optional, for creating and editing text files)
Portable GIMP (Optional, for editing and viewing images)

Once we’ve got all the programs we need downloaded, we can go ahead and create our DemocraKey.