Forum

Using a live Linux CD as a stealth tool.
 

Has anyone used one of the live Linux CDs as a stealth tool while on eBay? I've searched the forum and I don't see any posts about this. I thought of this the other day and it seems like it might be a perfect solution for insuring that you don't leave any footprints on your computer that eBay could possibly trace. Live Linux CDs allow you to boot your computer from a CD and they load the Linux OS and auto-detect your computers hardware automatically. The whole process only take a few minutes. Since Linux resides on the CD (which is not writable) and the computers memory, it's like doing a clean install of your OS every time you use it. It doesn't write anything to your hard drive, so when you reboot the computer everything is gone and there's nothing left that could be traced. These are also open source, so they're completely free to use. Probably the easiest one to use is Ubuntu and you can download it for free at ubuntu.com. It has a look and feel similar to Windows and it has the latest version of FireFox pre-installed. I've had a lot of experience using these, so if this sounds like it might be a good idea I'll post some more information.

A friend of mine does this, not for eBay but for other reasons.

The only thing I see with this is can you stay logged into eBay? Where are the flash objects and cookies going if you can't save them anywhere?

Other then that, it's new thinking and I like that.

New thinking is good, I agree. But what of those who challenged with computers, Linux is
a foreign language? We use Linux at work, but it has been set up with Firefox & that. A lot
of users here would never get the system configured.23423
http://www.technion.ac.il/~orenh/linux_penguin.jpg

I use a linux boot CD for backing up my hard drive because for the Windows line, anything that can back up a hard drive is practically non-existant. It all wants to boot into Windows and then half the files are locked, etc.

If you boot to Linux, hopefully you still can save files and notes and such.

Really all you need is Windows and then you need a web browser that can be set to store all cookies and cache in one single place and delete it. Then you need an extension to block flash. Turn off Java, too, just in case. Then you need to know where flash's local shared objects are stored -- visit youtube and it'll automatically create these files. Basically if you can't figure out this on a PC, it's much harder on *nix operating systems, which are designed to be extremely hard to use. For example, there's the vi text editor, which is far inferior to the old text editors of MsDOS and Commodore 64s from the early 80s, but lots of unix beards love vi better than anything, maybe because it's hard to use.

When you boot with a Linux boot CD everything resides in your computer's memory. It sets up a temp ram drive for storing settings. That's why I think it would make the perfect stealth tool, because when you reboot everything in memory is of course erased. Ubuntu is very easy to use and it auto-detects everything at boot up. If someone knows how to use windows, it will only take them a few minutes to learn Ubuntu. All they have to do is boot with the CD and then click on the FireFox icon, that's it. If you use a router you don't even have to configure any Internet settings. I used to be a tech and I used these all of the time for backup and diagnostics.

Okay, so it stores cookies, and even flash objects right? So logging into eBay will be no problem.

The only issue I see then is when your flash objects aren't there, you're going to start receiving eBay verification phone calls. That's one of the reasons to keep them intact.

I dont see the trouble of going throuhg all of that when yo ucan delete flash cookies with objeciton in 2 seconds....

Well really it's not a lot of trouble, all you need to do is boot from a CD and that's it.

I agree James...or better yet just use separate user accounts on your PC, therefor not having to delete anything keeping everything in tact.

But this is a forum, and New and Different techniques being introduced is a Good Thing!

That's the only problem that I can see with using one. It's almost too stealthy and might set off a red flag with eBay. I don't know that much about how they track flash objects, but they might be suspicious if there is nothing for them to track every time you login.

Now that you guys are talking about, I was actually experimenting with a Linux live OS a few months ago.

Maybe the cookies and flash objects could be burned on cd premantely? So each time you boot Linux live, login on to ebay would see the flash object.
A cd for each ebay account. I think it could be done that way, no?

I believe that would work for a flash cookie since it seems that ebay does not change it once stored. But as to the other permanent cookies which ebay has a lot of, it would probably not work, ebay server side may compare what you have on your PC with what they have themselves since last time you logged in and if they detect that you still have an older cookie (and you will always have the same cookies set on CD) than the one they gave you since your last visit or they add a new permanent cookie you don't have on a CD, this could throw a red flag. Using separate users is a great way to pass all these.