Privacy live CD: Lightweight Portable Security Review

US Army sponsored Privacy Linux live CD

Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) is a free security Linux live CD made by the Software Protection Initiative department, managed by the USA Air Force Research Laboratory and US Department Of Defence. The Software Protection Initiative is focused on protecting US Department of Defence intellectual property from piracy, tampering and exploitation by rogue nation state opponents.

There might be emergencies that force Government workers to be provided with computers at short notice which opens all kind of possibilities if access to secret information is involved. Lightweight Portable Security live CD enables Department of Defence workers to work from their homes or other locations without leaving any sensitive information behind in unsecured computers.

Lightweight Portable Security Linux live CD

Privacy Linux live CD LPS is a very effective and cheap tool to create trusted endpoints for government employees. This Linux live CD will not install anything on the guest computer as it does not mount the hard drive of the host machine, it will only run from volatile RAM memory and it will bypass any local malware while leaving no record of the session.

This Linux live CD is ideal for those on the road using different computers every week, those conducting financial transactions not wanting to leave traces behind, or to be used to send sensitive e-mails and browsing sensitive websites from an untrusted computers without leaving a local record of your Internet surfing activities.

What software does LPS-public include?

• IceWM lightweight Linux desktop.
• SmartCard-enabled Firefox browser supporting CAC and PIV cards.
• Remote desktop client that works with RDP or Citrix hosts.
• PDF (xPDF) and text viewer.
• Wireless networking support for many popular WiFi chipsets.
• Support for Adobe Flash.
• Firefox browser plugins for Encryption Wizard, GMail S/MIME and User Agent Switcher.
• Java and Encryption Wizard to deal with files encrypted using AES.

The LPS-Public edition is small, a 124MB image that can fit on a mini-CD, and requires a Pentium II or better processor and 384M of RAM. Due to its simplicity this privacy Linux live CD is also ideal to give out to someone who is a newbie and can get lost with the multitude of software and options included in modern Linux distributions.

There is also a LPS-Public Deluxe ISO image that comes with Open Office and a LPS-Public image that can be used from a USB flash memory stick without mounting the local hard drive, the free public version of Lightweight Portable Security Linux  live CD is available for download from the US army Software Protection Initiative website.

Visit SPL Lightweight Portable Linux website