Telecomix About
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The Telecomix operating system is a digital swiss-army knife for secure and private communications in situations of strong surveillance and limited access due to censorship or other network violence by government, corporations, or others.
Note: The current version (0.01) is a proof of concept. It has still not been tested in actual environments, and security flaws have yet not been detected. Do not use this software without being aware that possible flaws may exist. In future versions security will increase and the system will receive more testing.
To report bugs and to suggest improvements, please send an e-mail to info AT werebuild D0T eu.
To participate in the development, please use the Cryptoanarchy wiki pages.
You may also talk to us directly in our chat room.
The Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau have been commissioned to provide means for secure communications for all netizens, jellyfish and internauts. Our mission is to research, enforce and promote the use of encrypted tunnels, cipherspace and distributed communications. Our goal is that every bot and human shall have the means of communicating with each other. However, in the world we live in, this is not yet the case at the ordinary internets. Cipherspace on the other hand does not have these flaws, which is why the Telecomix OS is primary using cipherspace tools to access and host content. Governments, corporations, and possibly even other bodies, are putting the computer networks under surveillance, sometimes leading to imprisonments, torture and repression. We want to contribute to the technological development of crypto munitions that are widely availiable to any internet user. This operating system is one of our efforts.
We work for no profit, we work without human leaders, for the creation of the fractal cipherspace!
You may download it for free or buy the pre-installed USB drive from our partner Gnutiken. We use only free software, and you are free to use everything for any purpose. Just remember to spread data-love in the networks! <3
New in this version: Fixed bugs with character encoding and i2p working much better. Still, however, we are running experimental. Will get a bugtracking community service up soon, in the meantime, report bugs to info (at) werebuild.eu.
You can either buy an already-functional USB drive, by visiting the Gnutiken Web Store, or you can move the .iso to a CD or USB drive. The easiest method is often to buy it from the wonderful computer hippies at Gnutiken. However, if you want to save your money and time you can download the .iso file and copy it to your bootable media unit of choice. The procedure to do this differs between the operating systems.
If you have obtained a USB stick version of the Telecomix System, this is how to use it:
0. Disclaimer: Telecomix does not guarantee that the Telecomix System will work on all hardware. The Linux kernel may not support all wireless network cards, nor all graphics cards. Check the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO for a listing of all supported hardware.
1. Make sure your computer is set to boot from USB. This is done in the bios settings. These settings are changed just as you power on your computer, usually by pressing and holding a key (often one of F2, F8, F10, F12, Delete). Set the boot sequence to use USB as the first boot device. Save the settings, and reboot.
2. Insert the USB stick into a USB slot on your computer of choice.
In the terminal, type: dd if=/path/to/ISO-file of=/path/to/raw/device and press enter. If you do not know the path to the raw device, you can have a look in dmesg. Just type dmesg and press enter. From the information printed, you should be able to deduce what your USB stick is named. Also make sure that you are not overwriting some other media device (such as your hard drive) with this command. It is important that you know what you are doing before you press enter.
Reboot your computer with the USB stick still in it, and make sure that it boots from the correct device (see "Boot with pre-installed USB stick" above).
1. Mount the bootable .iso file to an image drive with a mounting software, such as Daemon Tools.
2. Insert your USB flash drive and enter the following commands into cmd: (please note this list assumes that your USB flash drive will be seen as disk 1.To confirm that it is type "list disk" after you've entered the DISKPART command) Otherwise you may wipe a different drive (such as your hard disk drive!).
3. Type into cmd:
diskpart
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
At this point your USB drive is formatted. DO NOT format the drive from
within Windows.
The final preparation step is to copy the installation files to your flash drive, this can be done by running the following command: (Please note D: is the drive letter for the source files and E: is the drive letter for your flash drive, if they are different on your system you need to change them accordingly). Exit DISKPART. Type: xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ That's it, configure usb device as primary boot device in your bios and install. (As remixed from http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/243423-14-image-flash ). See instructions under the section "Boot with pre-installed USB stick".
Note that it is also possible to burn the .iso file to a CDROM and boot from it. Use your favourite program for this, and make sure that you are not just copying the .iso file into a file system. The .iso file needs to be the only thing on the CDROM, as the ISO file itself has a file system, and a master boot record. Using a CDROM means that you will not be able to store anything anywhere. This will severely limit what you can do.
The telecomix operating system uses many different programs to anonymize the user. TOR and I2P constitute the most important programs, but they should not be used without protection from scripts that can leak personal data about the user. Torbutton is a filtering proxy that removes very many scripts. Torbutton is connected to Privoxy. Privoxy is used to filter simple "attacks" as well as to redirect your web browsers requests to the correct program: All ordinary requests go through TOR, and web sites ending with ".i2p" are sent to the I2P program. NoScript is also used to further filter the content of the web sites you are visiting.
TOR is a program that uses Onion Routing to anonymize the users. The TOR network consists of a large group of nodes that the client uses to set up a chain of encrypted links ("tunnels") with. It is very difficult to trace how the links are built and who is behind any of the tunnels.
The client (you) do not carry others traffic in the default mode. Therefore you will not be listed as a TOR user anywhere. It is possible to see that you are using TOR if someone is monitoring all network traffic in your country. In most countries, it is not illegal or punishable to just use TOR.
The topology of the TOR network could be said to consist of three types of nodes: 1) A small group of directory servers keep track of which nodes are carrying traffic in the network. These directory servers are consulted by all other nodes in the network when they need to access content in the TOR darknet, and when they need to set up new tunnels. 2) A large group of nodes that carry traffic and allows others to use them as building blocks for the tunnels. A tunnel consists of a chain of this type of TOR nodes. Some of these nodes are also allowing traffic to leave the TOR network and enter the ordinary internets. It is via these "exit nodes" that you can browse ordinary web sites anonymously. Be aware that the exit nodes will be able to both monitor and modify the traffic you send and receive. Accessing services at the internet with TOR that requires you to send passwords or confidential data in plaintext is strongly discouraged. 3) A huge amount of nodes are not carrying any traffic at all, they just use the TOR network. They are not listed by the directory servers and is supposodly only known by a small number of nodes within the TOR network. The Telecomix operating systems TOR installation is configured to be a node that belongs to this category. You are thus relatively secure as it is somewhat difficult to detect that you are using TOR. Of course, if someone is monitoring all internet traffic, it is still possible to see that you are using TOR by just monitoring which other computers at the internets that you are connecting to. But then again, it is not "illegal" to use TOR except for in some absolutely corrupt and horrid dictatorships.
TOR differs from I2P in that it uses directory servers instead of distributed hash tables to keep track of the network topology. While this allows you to pretty much anonymously use the TOR network, it has a drawback in that it is possible to DoS the directory servers, thus censoring the entire network. No successful DoS-attack has ever occured against the TOR network, as far as we know.
The I2P network differs from TOR at two or three points. First, it does not use any centralized servers to keep track of the network topology. Instead, it is using a distributed hash table, kademlia, together with floodfill routers to keep the network together. All nodes that participate in the network also helps with carrying each others traffic. (It is possible to configure I2P to use hidden mode, which informs your I2P installation that it should not help carrying others traffic. This means that your node will not be listed by the other nodes. Only a few other nodes will know that you exist. Hidden mode is as far as we know far from optimal, as it limits your bandwidth. If you want to, you can experiment with it yourself.)
I2P does not use onion routing, instead it uses garlic routing. It means that you have multiple tunnels to communicate through simultanously. These tunnels are periodically replaced. I2P also has very few nodes that relay traffic to the outside internets. I2P is genereally not used to access the internets. I2P differs from TOR in that it gives you access to a darknet that is only accessible for yourself and others that also use I2P. Think of it as a decentralized, denial-of-service resistant community for anonymous, paranoid people.
In summary: I2P is built to survive large scale attacks from governments and corporations, as it uses kademlia instead of centralized servers to keep track of the network topology. The downside of this is that you will reveal to other I2P users that you are using the I2P network. Even though they know that you are a member of the I2P community, it is still very difficult to tell which services you host or access. Being a member of the I2P community can be dangerous in severely corrupt regimes. Telecomix recommends that you turn it off or switch to hidden mode if you live in Iran.
To access the I2P console, to control your I2P installation or to download files with the built in anonymous bittorrent client, send anonymous mails and so on, go to localhost:7657.
Privoxy is a filtering proxy program that is being run locally at the Telecomix operating system. Privoxy will silently remove some content that could be harmful for your web browser. The primary purpose of Privoxy in the Telecomix OS is to glue TOR and I2P together so that your requests are automatically redirected to the correct program: If you are accessing ordinary websites at the internet or TORs internal hidden services, your web browser is is redirected to TOR. If you try to access web sites ending with .i2p (such as ugha.i2p) your browser will be redirected to the I2P program.
If you find that some web sites at the internet is blocking access from the TOR network it is also possible to use Privoxy to chain an ordinary http or socks proxy after TOR. This can for example be used to circumvent Wikipedias block against TOR users editing articles, as well as defeating many other sites that try to stop you. Please see the Privoxy manual for how to do this. Also notice that chaining proxies after TOR will make everything extremely slow.
A Firefox plugin, which is used by the Telecomix OS to turn off all sorts of plugins and scripts that could be used to track and reveal your location and web surfing habits. NoScript simply turns off all scripts that your web browser would otherwise execute. NoScript can be configured to allow certain websites to run scripts using a whitelist. IF YOU WHITELIST WEBSITES, BE VERY CAREFUL, JAVASCRIPT AND FLASH DOES NOT ALWAYS RESPECT YOUR PROXY SETTINGS AND THIS WILL REVEAL YOUR LOCATION! It is impossible to enjoy "web 2.0" websites when you have NoScript enabled. The cipherspace is a web 1.0 experience :)
Firefox is an open source web browser, through its plugin structure it can be enhanced with a lot of privacy preserving plugins, making it one of the most secure browsers there is. The Telecomix OS is using a variant of Firefox named Iceweasel.
You are not limited to just browsing web sites when using the Telecomix OS. If you open your terminal and type torify xyz where xyz is the name of the program you want to use, it will make all its connections use the TOR network when accessing content at the internets. Please notice that very many programs and protocols by default reveal information about you. Be careful and think twice before you press enter.
Port 8118 at 127.0.0.1 (localhost) is an http proxy that any program can use. This proxy is provided by privoxy. Port 4444 is also an http proxy, that you can use to access the I2P network via. It is provided by the I2P program. Port 9050 is a socks5 proxy that TOR makes available. I2P also makes a filtered IRC proxy available at 127.0.0.1 port 6668. If you connect to it, you will automatically be forwarded to one of a group of pseudonymous IRC servers where no censorship exists (they will likely kick you from channels if you flood them though). Do not use IRC with torify, as the IRC protocol is not secure unless some commands are filtered away. It is also possible to access the Telecomix IRC server via I2P. Please refere to telecomix.i2p for more information. We would love to have you in our networks <3
Telecomix needs more ciphernauts! We need cryptographers, news authors, tunnel diggers, sekrit agents and bureaucrats for our operations. Join us at IRC at the channel #telekompaketet at the irc.telecomix.org server (IRC web interface: here.)
To participate in the development, please use the Cryptoanarchy wiki pages.
