Security applications
How do these privacy distributions protect you and your data?
As well as offering a variety of tools such as USB Guard out of the box, Kodachi takes many other steps to bolster security. The distro uses Apparmor for application isolation. You can use Keepassxc for managing passwords.
You can also safeguard data within encrypted volumes using Zulucrypt or Veracrypt. It also features various tools for hiding traces of use from the system such as Metadata Anonymization Toolkit (MAT), for zapping metadata information from files, Bleachbit and more. You’ll find all these and more applications and utilities on the dock, at the bottom of the screen.
Tails is primarily funded by the Tor project and it too utilises Apparmor for application isolation. You’ll also find a password generator to help you come up with strong passwords, and Keepassxc for securely storing them. Like the other distros, it also provides MAT out of the box. As an added precaution, the administrative password, which is needed to perform tasks such as installing software and executing commands which require root privileges is disabled by default in the distribution. You can set one up from the Welcome Screen, but not from within the Gnome desktop. The distro is also configured to wipe your RAM on reboot or shutdown to protect against forensic recovery techniques.
If you want the same capabilities with Whonix, you must boot into its Live mode, instead of booting into the virtual disks. This presents additional security as all changes made to the system, such as newly installed software, websites that you’ve browsed and downloaded content is automatically flushed as soon as you restart or shutdown.
TENS features the Encryption Wizard which, like the distribution itself, is created by the US Air Force Research Laboratory to encrypt documents and directories. It uses 128- or 256-bit AES encryption, and supports compression of encrypted archives. You can also enable Dnscrypt for additional security.
Besides the Tor tools, Septor also has a few other privacy and security-enhancing programs such as the Sweeper utility to clear the cache and temp files, MAT, and the Veracrypt encryption utility.