Security and privacy features

What can they do besides repair and rescue?

While the primary purpose of these distros is to rescue a broken computer, many also pack in a bunch of tools to help secure your system and prevent privacy leaks. That’s because it isn’t uncommon for security issues to bring down a computer. On occasion, you might also have to sanitise an installation before bringing it back up in order to ensure the health of the other machines it interacts with on the network.

Morpheusarch has the nmap tool for exploring the network, which you can use through the Lindiag script. The distro also has a couple of utilities which can wipe filesystem signatures from a device and also set hard disk parameters.

AIO System Rescue Toolkit also includes nwipe to help securely zap files. ALT Linux Rescue includes tools to securely delete files and investigate security breaches. The distro is designed for several scenarios, but unfortunately ensuring privacy isn’t one of them.

Systemrescuecd does take steps to enhance your privacy if you’re using a Yubikey. It includes the Yubikey Manager app as

well as the Yubikey Personalization Tool that can help you reprogram the configuration slot on the device to enable additional authentication functionalities such as OTP. Besides these, you’ll find several tools to help you delete data securely including shred, wipe and the Thc-secure Deletion tool.

Much like its peers, although ensuring security and privacy aren’t among the goals of UBCD, the distro does have a specific category where it lists about a dozen tools, including several lowlevel utilities, for securely wiping disks. There are also scanners to sniff out viruses and malware.