Tails

#1 Updated by sajolida 2014-04-12 11:21:53

I check on my local network, and at least in the DHCP leases, the hostname “amnesia” is not leaked. So, can you precise where do you see the current hostname being leaked?

#3 Updated by techfx 2014-04-14 01:23:21

I strongly agree, having the hostname show amnesia is a big flag to system administrators and other personal monitoring their local network.

Instead of having it say something like amnesia or anonos or anything that might indicate the user is using an incognito distro it could be something very generic that lots of users use:

1. “host”

2. “pc”

3. “hostname”

4. “network”

Of course a random hostname would be best but that would take far more time to implement, for the time being Tails developers can simply change amnesia to something generic. Why annonce to the system admins that we are using a incognito disto? Just makes no sense to have the hostname as “amnesia”. Any system admin or it person worth their salt will know they are using Tails and investigate the matter further. If a generic hostname is user then they would have to use more advanced methods to detect Tails users on their network.

Hopefully by Tails 1.0 the default hostname can change from “amnesia” to someting generic like “pc” or if possible maybe blank.

#4 Updated by sajolida 2014-04-14 06:48:33

> I strongly agree, having the hostname show amnesia is a big flag to
> system administrators and other personal monitoring their local
> network.

Can you explain us more in details where this hostname appears on the
local network? It is not revealed by DHCP queries. Is there anything
else you are worried about?

> Instead of having it say something like amnesia or anonos or anything
> that might indicate the user is using an incognito distro it could be
> something very generic that lots of users use:
>
> 1. “host”
> 2. “pc”
> 3. “hostname”
> 4. “network”

See also the related issue Feature #5655. Any bit of help in that direction is
welcome.

#5 Updated by t3x 2014-04-15 20:42:02

There seems to be a lot of confusion around identifying a Tails user using the hostname “amnesia”.

Can someone a little more knowledgable please answer the following question:

If a system administrator is looking at the users on their network, can they easily spot Tails users by looking for the “amneisa” hostname?

In other words, if I use Tails what does my computer hostname (aka computer name) look like to someone monitoring the network like a system administrator? Do they see it as “amnesia” or does Tails not show anything for the hostname and it’s simply blank.

For example at the moment when I use my laptop and I login to my linksys router admin page it shows that laptop as “MynameMacbookPro” and the IP. Curious what Tails shows up as.

#6 Updated by sajolida 2014-04-16 09:34:22

> There seems to be a lot of confusion around identifying a Tails user
> using the hostname “amnesia”.
>
> Can someone a little more knowledgable please answer the following
> question:
>
> If a system administrator is looking at the users on their network,
> can they easily spot Tails users by looking for the “amneisa”
> hostname?
>
> In other words, if I use Tails what does my computer hostname (aka
> computer name) look like to someone monitoring the network like a
> system administrator? Do they see it as “amnesia” or does Tails not
> show anything for the hostname and it’s simply blank.
>
> For example at the moment when I use my laptop and I login to my
> linksys router admin page it shows that laptop as “MynameMacbookPro”
> and the IP. Curious what Tails shows up as.

That information is usually given through DHCP, and Tails is preventing
that leak already. So this one is out of the way.

In comment #1, I already asked for more information about other possible
leaks of the hostname and nobody came up with more scenarios…

#7 Updated by intrigeri 2014-04-16 09:37:17

> For example at the moment when I use my laptop and I login to my linksys router admin
> page it shows that laptop as “MynameMacbookPro” and the IP. Curious what Tails shows
> up as.

It would be useful if you actually tried, and reported your findings :)

#10 Updated by aguelier@ruggedinbox.com 2014-11-07 23:42:11

Hostname can also leak out when sending email and who knows what other regressions might show up in the future. The hostname shouldn’t be random from the set of all possible hostnames (which risks uniquely fingerprinting the user session), but random from the set of common host names (such as Windows/Mac/Debian defaults), similar to how the Tails Pidgin client randomly selects a normal looking username for IRC chat.

#11 Updated by intrigeri 2014-11-08 08:58:42

> Hostname can also leak out when sending email

Note that this is something we test before each release of Tails: https://tails.boum.org/contribute/release_process/test/#index7h1

#12 Updated by Anonymous 2014-12-03 21:58:04

During our last meeting we have come to the conclusion that anything but the single and shared username+hostname seems actively harmful and considerably reduce the anonymity set.

This ticket’s cause was that the hostname “amnesia” is too targettable. Further discussion should thus happen here: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5655 Share username and hostname amongst all anonymity distributions.

#13 Updated by Anonymous 2014-12-03 22:12:35

Should I close this ticket?