My friend Quinn reports in Wired News on a new project to make an anonymizing bootable CD: boot your computer with it and defeat spyware and cloak yourself in anonymity on the net. It's a great idea, but it's hit some technical snags, some of which you can help with (for example, we need more people to run Tor servers which relay traffic from anonymous users).
Titled Anonym.OS, the system is a type of disk called a "live CD" — meaning it's a complete solution for using a computer without touching the hard drive. Developers say Anonym.OS is likely the first live CD based on the security-heavy OpenBSD operating system.
OpenBSD running in secure mode is relatively rare among desktop users. So to keep from standing out, Anonym.OS leaves a deceptive network fingerprint. In everything from the way it actively reports itself to other computers, to matters of technical minutia such as TCP packet length, the system is designed to look like Windows XP SP1. "We considered part of what makes a system anonymous is looking like what is most popular, so you blend in with the crowd," explains project developer Adam Bregenzer of Super Light Industry.
Update: Torrent of Anonym.OS — thanks, John!
