Reshaping the future of KickSecure & Whonix

Organization
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UwU

Editing when I feels like it.

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If @Patrick is reading this, let me ask you a few question. How do you Mr. Patrick define KickSecure & Whonix and who are the targeted audience. Reply me without looking at your wiki. Not KickSecure / Whonix’s Wiki. None.

If you are not willing to read the documentation, I do not think the developers will have a positive attitude towards whatever it is you want to propose!

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I think @Patrick have a definition. *his definition

Draft

I just think the operating system is developing too fast, and lack a little grounding in the process. KS & W are one operating system, not two (efficiency-wise).

KS = base (earth), W = extension (building).
Without a strong and stable ‘earth’ / ‘ground’, how’s the ‘building’ even gonna hold up.

base = core
extension = blending

We can have some sort of module to enable the ‘extension’. Take a look at slax(dot).org. Let’s build something similiar.

I’m typing kind of randomly because I’m flooded with idea that can draw more attention. Whonix is publically know to be better than Tails (most of the time). Tails and Whonix are well known. Whonix is second to QubesOS(the extreme). It is considered lighter in resource usage. Low End Computer can still take advantage of KickSecure.

Bear with me, Please plot mindmap and you’ll understand what I want to present.

Suggestion

  1. module based (features can be loaded and unloaded) (this can help to target people with specific requirement, strictest or not)
  2. securityManager (all security related settings are only in here, so we don’t need package separation)
  3. light on resources
  4. To make the operating system beautiful, hire archcraft owner to do the beautifying job
  5. Documenting can be hard, switch to arch based one day. Because every live mode will boot into a fresh state. We can take advantage of documented resources.
  6. Make the operating system light enough to support copy2ram
  7. Strip out bluetooth, audio by default. Can be reloaded via module.
  8. Ship with Firefox ESR with strictest privacy options enable. No Extension Yet of course. It’s not hardening like arkenfox thing, but default settings after pulled to the max security.
  9. coming soon.

is heavy operating system really required to ensure security ? is what i’m really curious about. Not saying Whonix or KickSecure is heavy but hey it’s an improvement and the code base will be easy to manage, small & efficient. Isn’t that what we want ? We’re the technology itself.

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This feels a bit like walking into an atomic power plant and suggesting how to redesign the reactor without knowing much about nuclear engineering. It’s not that the ideas lack enthusiasm or creativity, they just miss the depth rrequired to understand the complexities involved.

Complex systems are built on years of research and testing to balance functionality, stability, security. Making changes, like modularizing features or switching core components, isn’t as simple as it sounds. It involves considering dependencies, complexities, and how these changes could impact the core goals of the system.

The best way to contribute is to focus on areas where you can have a meaningful impact, like testing or documentation. Broad, surface-level ideas are a good starting point but without grounding in the system’s design, they can end up being a distraction rather than a help.

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  1. module based (features can be loaded and unloaded) (this can help to target people with specific requirement, strictest or not)

I suggest we create a metapackage that install everything except Tor. Let Kicksecure focus on security hardening and Whonix (based on Kicksecure) focus on anonymity.

I want to run Desktop and Server on a secure hardened Debian based system. But I don’t need Tor on some of the place.

  1. Ship with Firefox ESR with strictest privacy options enable. No Extension Yet of course. It’s not hardening like arkenfox thing, but default settings after pulled to the max security.

We need a new browser without any remote features + security hardened.

is heavy operating system really required to ensure security ?

Yes. For example I use Gnome on desktop. You can customize Gnome UI to make it looks like Mac OS X. And the system-monitor-next and Freon extension helps me to monitor the real time performance.

Neither Xfce nor LXDE can do it.

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The presence of Tor on Kicksecure is purely for security reasons, not for anonymity. It makes it so that a user cannot be singled out to receive malicious software via normal software updates. See: Kicksecure - A Security Hardened Linux Distribution

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Kicksecure ensures all system updates are done over the Tor network by default. This way, update servers cannot know the user’s identity or IP address.

This IS anonymity. But knowing the IP address doesn’t make any difference? The massive scanners scans the whole internet all the time. Also, the signature of packages and reproducible builds of Debian will prevent supply chain attack.

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Too high maintenance effort. The tor+ configuration lines are

so that would require a separate package.

No suitable browser could be identified at the time of writing. Details here:

Reproducible builds prove that everyone can get the same clean binary from the published source, but they don’t stop a malicious/compromised update server from deciding to treat specific user(s) differently by sending them a different, targeted malicious upgrade. That’s why torified updates are still needed for protection against targeted attacks even if reproducible builds are in place.

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Maybe a Metapackage just include usability-misc dist-base-files security-misc kicksecure-base-files tirdad* sandbox-app-launcher

And just add post install script one code rm -rf /etc/apparmor.d/tor*

From I understand, those packages are the “core” part of Kicksecure hardening.

Oh ok. I am using Firefox ESR + arkenfox now. It is annoying that I don’t know how to make it radio silenced myself!

First, I already have Tor running on my router in transparent proxy mode for some machines(not all). They have third party repos running. Torify everything will cause slow update downloads on other machines ans double-Tor on the machines already have proxy running on.

Edit:

I forgot to say this, I don’t want sdwdate, it is over Tor, I need to have everything connect to the local NTP server. If time is not synchronized will cause trouble.

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Not difficult to invent but difficult to maintain. The problem is maintenance. It would not be the default. No developer would use this by default. Hence, over time it’s likely to break to to downstream (Kicksecure) or upstream (Debian) changes.

Last time I checked, arkenfox did reject radio silence as a development goal, unfortunately. Quote arkenfox wiki chapter.

Phone home. Does not do anything about Firefox phone home. Feature Request: Radio Silence by Default for Browser Startup and Background Connections aka “Disable Phone Home” got instantly closed, rejected and locked for further discussion.

For more, similar, see arkenfox wiki chapter.

That’s why dummy-dependency. sdwdate or any other package can be easily uninstalled using dummy-dependency.

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Maybe just leave it there? This package will be use for those who wants to harden their Debian already installed.

Developers won’t, but sys-admins will, I am a sys-admin, I am always looking for some hardened Debian based server distro. Only those packages + apparmor + zsh are more than enough for me. Technically I want to enable ICMP too, and I actually did that to my servers, it is handy to check the status whether the server is living or died. But I got rid of them after I hook all of them to monitoring software.

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  1. Bring madaidan back to dev team? I am joking. Where is madaidan? Why are they not active in Kicksecure community anymore? Why did they leave?
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No reasons were given.

I have no information other than what is - or better said isn’t - on the public record.

The GitHub account madaidan has had no activity anywhere for a few years.

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