Removing potential backdoors from Tails 3.0

The default Tails 3.0 bootable ISO includes proprietary binary blobs running on network hardware. They may contain backdoors and are silently loaded when Tails boots. There is no known exploit at this date but it may take years before they are discovered. To remove this security and privacy risk, a new ISO can be built using a pristine Debian GNU/Linux 9 / stretch installation.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y git
$ git clone -b stable https://git-tails.immerda.ch/tails
$ cd tails

Edit config/chroot_apt/preferences and remove the following block:

Explanation: src:firmware-nonfree
Package: firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-amd-graphics ...
Pin: release o=Debian,n=sid
Pin-Priority: 999

Build the bootable ISO

$ cat | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/00-builder-jessie-pinning <<EOF
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: origin deb.tails.boum.org
Pin-Priority: 800
EOF
$ sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common dirmngr
$ sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://deb.tails.boum.org/ builder-jessie main'
$ sudo apt-key adv --receive-keys C7988EA7A358D82E
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y \
  dpkg-dev \
  gettext \
  intltool \
  libfile-slurp-perl \
  liblist-moreutils-perl \
  libyaml-libyaml-perl \
  libyaml-perl \
  libyaml-syck-perl \
  perlmagick \
  po4a \
  syslinux-utils \
  time \
  whois
# because lb build sets /etc/resolv.conf to 127.0.0.1 in chroot
$ sudo apt-get install -y bind9
$ sudo systemctl start bind9
$ sudo apt-get install ikiwiki
...
Get:6 http://.../main amd64 libmarkdown2 amd64 2.2.1-1~bpo8+1~0.tails1 [35.0 kB]
Get:7 http://.../main amd64 ikiwiki all 3.20160905.0tails1 [1,413 kB]
...
# because --no-merge-usr is not in builder-jessie debootstrap
$ sudo apt-get install debootstrap=1.0.89
$ sudo apt-get install live-build
$ sudo lb clean --all
$ sudo lb config
$ sudo lb build

The *.iso file can then be installed.

Run SecureDrop tests without Vagrant

Assuming a virgin installation of Ubuntu 14.04, the SecureDrop repository and its dependencies can be installed with the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python-virtualenv git
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev
virtualenv /tmp/v
source /tmp/v/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip # so it is able to get binary wheels
pip install ansible # so we have version 2+

git clone http://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop
cd securedrop

cat > /tmp/inventory <<EOF
[development]
localhost
[securedrop_application_server]
localhost
[securedrop:children]
securedrop_application_server
EOF

ansible-playbook -vvvv \
       -e securedrop_repo=$(pwd) \
       -e non_default_securedrop_user=ubuntu \
       -e non_default_securedrop_code=$(pwd)/securedrop \
       -i /tmp/inventory -c local \
       install_files/ansible-base/securedrop-development.yml

And the tests can then be run with

$ cd securedrop
$ DISPLAY=:1 pytest -v tests

Shrink an OpenStack image

After a while openstack image create creates increasingly large files because the blocks used and freed are not trimmed and it is not uncommon for hypervisors to not support fstrim. The image can be shrinked and the virtual machine recreated from it to reclaim the unused space.

$ openstack image save --file 2017-06-16-gitlab.qcow2 2017-06-16-gitlab
$ qemu-img convert 2017-06-16-gitlab.qcow2 -O raw work.img
$ sudo kpartx -av work.img
add map loop0p1 (252:0): 0 104855519 linear 7:0 2048
$ sudo e2fsck -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1
...
cloudimg-rootfs: 525796/6400000 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 2967491/13106939 blocks
$ sudo resize2fs -p -M /dev/mapper/loop0p1
...
The filesystem on /dev/mapper/loop0p1 is now 3190624 (4k) blocks long.
$ sudo kpartx -d work.img
loop deleted : /dev/loop0

Create a smaller image that is big enough for the resized file system.

$ sudo virt-df -h work.img
Filesystem                                Size       Used  Available  Use%
work.img:/dev/sda1                         12G       9.7G       2.0G   83%
$ qemu-img create -f raw smaller.img 13G
Formatting 'smaller.img', fmt=raw size=13958643712

Resize the large image into the smaller one:

$ sudo virt-resize --shrink /dev/sda1 work.img smaller.img
...
Resize operation completed with no errors.  Before deleting the old disk,
carefully check that the resized disk boots and works correctly.
$ ls -lh work.img smaller.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 13G Jun 16 08:38 smaller.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 50G Jun 16 08:31 work.img
$ qemu-img convert smaller.img -O qcow2 smaller.qcow2

Upload the smaller image

time openstack image create --file smaller.qcow2 \
     --disk-format=qcow2 --container-format=bare 2017-06-16-gitlab-smaller

installing tails with kvm

For test purposes it is useful to bootstrap tails using virtual machines and files. Here is how it can be done with KVM.

$ wget 'https://tails-dl.urown.net/tails/stable/tails-amd64-3.3/tails-amd64-3.3.iso'
$ wget 'https://tails-dl.urown.net/tails/stable/tails-amd64-3.3/tails-amd64-3.3.iso.sig'
$ gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-key BA2C222F44AC00ED9899389398FEC6BC752A3DB6
$ gpg --verify tails-amd64-3.3.iso.sig tails-amd64-3.3.iso
$ qemu-img create -f raw tails-installed.img 8G
$ kvm -m 4096 -cdrom tails-amd64-3.3.iso -device usb-ehci \
               -boot d \
               -drive id=my_usb_disk,file=tails-installed.img,if=none,format=raw \
               -device usb-storage,drive=my_usb_disk,removable=on \
               -net nic -net user -display sdl

From the virtual machine console, install tails to the USB device (i.e. tails-installed.img). When the installation is complete Control-C KVM. Copy tails-installed.img to tails-backup.img in case you want to start over. Run tails with:

kvm -m 4096 -device usb-ehci \
               -drive id=my_usb_disk,file=tails-installed.img,if=none,format=raw \
               -device usb-storage,drive=my_usb_disk,removable=on \
               -net nic -net user -display sdl

Continue reading “installing tails with kvm”

Installing python-crush on CentOS 7 without network

To install python-crush on a CentOS 7 that does not have access to internet, the necessary files must be downloaded via an USB drive. The python34-pip package must be installed from the EPEL repository the machine uses for maintenance purposes.

On the machine with access to internet:

$ sudo pip3 install wheel
$ sudo pip3 wheel --wheel-dir /usbdrive crush wheel

On the machine with no access to internet:

$ sudo pip3 install /usbdrive/wheel-*
$ sudo pip3 install --no-index --use-wheel --find-links=/usbdrive crush

The crush command can be verified with:

$ crush --help