Portably Securing & Anonymizing Yourself

by Anonymous (of course)

 

Ok, a caveat for everyone first. While I’ve done my damnedest to make this system as flawless as possible, always research this stuff out for yourself as well. If you find an error or have a suggestion, feel free to contact the webmaster who'll try to contact me. Also, no matter how secure you make the system, you are only as secure as the person using that system. In other words, don’t screw up or get lazy! Lastly, this is some rather complicated stuff. I've tried to explain as much as possible but I expect you to have some knowledge already. Don't know something? Google it.

USB Flash Drive

The first thing you’ll need is a USB flash drive. Try getting something that is at least 512 mb but the bigger it is the better. While you can do this on your main computer’s main hard drive what’s the use of only being anonymous on one system? By using a USB drive your data will be anonymous on any system you plug it in to and if done right when you leave only a top level computers expert will even be able to tell you where ever plugged in.

True Crypt

Now, go to True Crypt and download their encryption program. After all, what's the point of being anonymous online if someone can compromise it by gaining access to your USB drive? As with any program you download for this article, read the manual thoroughly. For the lazy ones I'll go through how to set up a basic truecrypt drive.

• Download and unzip and install truecrypt to your system. Start up the program and then go to "Tools" in the top menu bar. Select the option "Traveler Disk Setup..." Select the root directory to your USB drive and set it up.
• Open up your USB drive and start up truecrypt. From there select the "create volume" button. For now you'll want to create a standard volume so leave the first option as normal and select next.
• Select a file to host the truecrypt volume from. It needs to be something disposable, so if need be, create a new .txt file and just host it from there. Just make sure that the file is on your USB drive and not your hard drive.
• Use the blowfish algorithm and the default hash algorithm in the next menu.
• You'll need to choose how big you want your truecrypt file now. I'd suggest making it roughly half or less of the total usb drive size. This allows you to store normal files on your USB, further obscuring both the location and the existence of your truecrypt volume.
• Now it is time to choose your password. follow their instructions, making the password as long and convoluted as possible. As we are human it is almost impossible to remember something that long and crazy, right? An easy way to get around this is to pick half a dozen random words, jumble it, and translate it into leet. You do loose some security since it is conceivable that someone may guess it but I view it as an acceptable risk to avoid actually writing down the password to remember it. Never write down your password anywhere! Find out more about passwords here.
• On the next menu wiggle your mouse around for a good 30 seconds or more. This will help boost the random pool of characters needed for the format. Leave the rest of the options on their default settings and format. Notice the warning message? Now you know why I said that file had to be disposable.
• Finally, start up truecrypt and mount your newly-created volume.
• If you want, change whatever you named the file that truecrypt is hosted from and rename it to something inconspicious .Zip files are fantastic for this since they are large normally and if someone tries to unpack the file it just appears corrupted. Now, fill up the rest of the unencrypted portion of the drive with innocuous junk and files to camouflage it more.

Internet Browsing

This next part is pretty easy. Download Torpark to your truecrypt volume (not your USB drive). Unzip it and the program is installed. Torpark allows you to surf the internet anonymously without a problem. It does take a little while to boot up and since it is anonymizing your connection it will be a little slower than normal. If you want to know all the spiffy details check out the site above.

Email

While internet browsing was definitely easy to set up, email will be more confusing since there are many options out there depending on how secure and anonymous you need to be. As with anything, you are only as anonymous as the data sent. Keyloggers and spy programs on the computer may track what you type, even if you send your data through an encryption system. So, no matter how confident you feel, never write or post identifiable information.

Hushmail is probably the simplest system possible. It is a secure online email system. Hotmail on steroids. It isn't open source though and requires the use of javascript. Since we are setting up everything up on our usb key, why not use something local?

Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail & GPG installed is quite similar to Hushmail in features but would be installed on your USB drive instead of web based. You do have to find a mail server that is free (no credit-card trail) that allows pop or imap connections though. May I suggest Nerdshack?

• Download and install the portable thunderbird and it's goodies to your hidden drive. Grab an account from Nerdshack (or similar).
• Start up Thunderbird and set up the basic account. Follow the instructions from Nerdshack if need be. Send an email to yourself to see if it works properly.
• Now go to the menu-bar and select OpenPGP -> Key Management -> Generate -> New Key Pair
• Checkmark the first option about your identity. Select a good passphrase. if you can, come up another password using the same method as described in the truecrypt section. Just don't use "password" (or the ultra-devious "PassWord") ok? Add a comment if you want, but nothing you wouldn't want everyone to know.
• Choose how long you want the key to be valid. Most of the time just set it so it'll never expire.
• Generate the Key and then create a revocation certificate saved on your truecrypt volume.
• Now go to Tools ->Account Settings ->OpenPGP Security. Checkmark "Encrypt Messages by Default" & "Sign Encrypted Messages by Default"

Congratulations, Thunderbird is now set up.

OK, so what if you want complete anonymity and security? It'll take some work, but Quicksilver will do the trick. Once you are done, you'll have a completely untraceable and encrypted email system set up. The big problem is we are talking a very complicated setup and it isn't portable. As such, it is out of the range of our instructions here but I thought I'd let you know. Maybe in the future....

Instant Messaging

Start off by grabbing Gaim portable and installing it onto your hidden drive. We will be using OTR from the Cypherpunks with Gaim because while gaim-encryption plugin does secure your conversations, OTR makes it so that there is no proof that the messages ever actually happened. With most encryption systems, all your history is compromised the minute someone obtains your key. With OTR that is impossible.

• After downloading and installing Gaim portable, grab OTR and install it to your GaimPortable\App\gaim directory. Start up Gaim and go to your Tools -->Plugins option. From there checkmark the Off the Record Messaging plugin.
• Now start up a conversation with someone else who has OTR installed with their gaim. If it doesn't automatically try to start a secure conversation, click the OTR icon next to your text-entry box.
• You'll notice that there are three different conversation types. Verified, unverified, and not private. "Not private" is obvious but unverified means that you have a secure IM session, but you don't really know that it is whoever you are talking to just yet. If you right click on the icon you can choose "verify fingerprint." Once you have done this the user will be verified and the icon will turn yellow. Happy chatting!

Assorted

A nifty little tool you may be interested in is Cybershredder. It acts as a permanent trash bin, overwriting and destroying anything you drag and drop into it. Much more secure than deleting your files using window's system. Just download the latest version and unzip it to your truecrypt drive. For maximum security go under settings and make sure "normal shred" is checked.

If you find browsing your truecrypt drive for all your programs a little bit of a pain try Pstart. Just do a portable install to your truecrypt drive. After you set it up all it'll take is one click to create a "mini start bar" in your system tray.