Distro of the week: Tinfoilhat Linux

October 22, 2006 in Encryption, PGP, Tinfoilhat, linux, software | No comments

Tinfoilhat is a bootable floppy linux distribution for PGP encryption/decryption. Over-engineered, and under-sized, THL comes in handy when paranoia hits it’s peak!

From the README:

What Tinfoil Hat Linux protects against ….
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* Worms & viruses

The OS doesn’t support networking, all binaries are compiled staticly, and all non-root partitions are mounted with no-execute permissions. A hash of the NVRAM is displayed at boot time.

* Data retrieval

All temporary files are created on an encrypted ramdisk which is destroyed on shutdown. Even the PGP keyfile information can be stored encrypted on the floppy.

* Keystroke monitoring

THL has gpggrid , a wrapper for GPG that lets you use a video game style character entry system instead of typing in your passphrase. Keystroke loggers get a random set of grid points, not your passphrase.

* Power usage & other side channels

If you start the Paranoid options, a copy of GPG runs in the background generating keys & encrypting random documents. This makes it harder to determine When your REAL encryption is taking place. See the TEMPEST section below.

* (some) User stupidity

If you use THL, it’s very difficult to leave a plaintext file on your hard drive by accident.