See here for the complete list of apps. In addition to those as part of the base install you get an email server.
Yes. The minimum requirements are to have some hardware that you can install Debian onto and also that you have administrator access to your internet router so that you can forward ports to the system which has Freedombone installed.
@@ -416,17 +420,25 @@ The lack of a static IP address can be worked around by using a dynamic DNS serv+There can be big differences in the performance of microSD cards, and the cheaper ones are almost invariably terrible and/or unusable. Sandisk and Samsung currently appear to be the better brands. You can find some performance benchmarks here. +
+When the project began in late 2013 the FreedomBox project seemed to be going nowhere, and was only designed to work with the DreamPlug hardware. There was some new hardware out - the Beaglebone Black - which could run Debian and was also a free hardware design so seemed more appropriate. Hence the name "Freedombone", being like FreedomBox but on a Beaglebone. There are some similarities and differences between the two projects:
The FreedomBox project supports Raspberry Pi builds, and the image build system for Freedombone is based on the same system. However, although the Raspberry Pi can run a version of Debian it requires a closed proprietary blob in order to boot the hardware. Who knows what that blob might contain or what exploits it could facilitate. From an adversarial point of view if you were trying to deliver "bulk equipment interference" then it doesn't get any better than piggybacking on something which has control of the boot process, and hence all subsequently run processes.
@@ -469,9 +481,9 @@ So although the Raspberry Pi is cheap and hugely popular it's not supported by tYears ago Tor was usually depicted in the mainstream media as something scary inhabited by cyberterrorists and other bad cybers, but today to a large extent Tor is accepted as just another way of routing data in a network. Depending upon where you live there may still be some amount of fearmongering about Tor, but it now seems clear that the trajectory is towards general acceptance.
@@ -492,9 +504,9 @@ On the negative side it's a complex system which is not fully decentralized.Within this project Tor is used more to provide accessibility than the anonymity factor for which Tor is better known. The onion address system provides a way of being able to access sites even if you don't own a conventional domain name or don't have administrator access to your local internet router to be able to do port forwarding.
@@ -512,17 +524,17 @@ Even if you're running the "onion only" build, this only means that sites are acYou could if you manually edited the relevant nginx configuration files and installed some dynamic DNS system yourself. If you already have sysadmin knowledge then that's probably not too hard. But the builds created with the onion-addresses-only option aren't really intended to support access via clearnet domains.
Github is paradoxically a centralized, closed and proprietary system which happens to mostly host free and open source projects. Up until now it has been relatively benign, but at some point in the name of "growth" it will likely start becoming more evil, or just become like SourceForge - which was also once much loved by FOSS developers, but turned into a den of malvertizing.
@@ -540,17 +552,17 @@ Currently many of the repositories used for applications which are not yet packaThis system tries to block port scanners. Any other system trying to scan for open ports will have their IP address added to a temporary block list for 24 hours.
It's not recommended unless there exists some compelling reason for you to be on there. That site asks users to upload the private keys, and even if the keys are client side encrypted with a passphrase there's always the chance that there will be a data leak in future and letter agencies will then have a full time opportunity to crack the passphrases.
@@ -560,9 +572,9 @@ Saying something resembling "only noobs will use crackable private key passphOrdinarily this is good advice. However, the threat model for a device in your home is different from the one for a generic server in a massive warehouse. Compare and contrast:
@@ -620,9 +632,9 @@ In the home environment a box with a good firewall and no GUI components installProbably you need to add the site to the NoScript whitelist. Typically click/press on the noscript icon (or select from the menu on mobile) then select whitelist and add the site URL. You may also need to disable HTTPS Everywhere when using onion addresses, which don't use https.
@@ -632,9 +644,9 @@ Another factor to be aware of is that it can take a while for the onion addressIt was originally designed to run on the Beaglebone Black, but that should be regarded as the most minimal system, because it's single core and has by today's standards a small amount of memory. Obviously the more powerful the hardware is the faster things like web pages (blog, social networking, etc) will be served but the more electricity such a system will require if you're running it 24/7. A good compromise between performance and energy consumption is something like an old netbook. The battery of an old netbook or laptop even gives you UPS capability to keep the system going during brief power outages or cable re-arrangements, and that means using full disk encryption on the server also becomes more practical.
@@ -644,9 +656,9 @@ It was originally designed to run on the Beaglebone Black, but that should be reYes. Freedombone can support a small number of users, for a "friends and family" type of home installation. This gives them access to an email account, XMPP, SIP phone and the blog (depending on whether the variant which you installed includes those).
@@ -669,9 +681,9 @@ Another point is that Freedombone installations are not intended to support manyCelebrities recommend Signal. It's Free Software so it must be good, right?
@@ -694,9 +706,9 @@ To give credit where it's due Signal is good, but it could be a lot better. TheOn mobile there are various options. The apps which are likely to be most secure are ones which have end-to-end encryption enabled by default and which can also be onion routed via Orbot. End-to-end encryption secures the content of the message and onion routing obscures the metadata, making it hard for a passive adversary to know who is communicating with who.
@@ -706,13 +718,13 @@ The current safest way to chat is to use Conv-There are many other fashionable chat apps with end-to-end security, but often they are closed source, have a single central server or can't be onion routed. It's also important to remember that closed source chat apps should be assumed to be untrustworthy, since their security cannot be independently verified. +There are many other fashionable chat apps with end-to-end security, but often they are closed source, have a single central server or can't be onion routed. It's also important to remember that closed source chat apps should be assumed to be untrustworthy, since their security cannot be independently verified.
To remove a user:
@@ -727,9 +739,9 @@ Select Administrator controls then Manage Users and then DeleteIf you're making profits out of the logs by running large server warehouses and then data mining what users click on - as is the business model of well known internet companies - then logging everything makes total sense. However, if you're running a home server then logging really only makes sense if you're trying to diagnose some specific problem with the system, and outside of that context logging everything becomes more of a liability than an asset.
@@ -743,9 +755,9 @@ On the Freedombone system web logs containing IP addresses are turned off by defThe tripwire will be automatically reset once per week. If you want to reset it earlier then do the following:
@@ -760,9 +772,9 @@ Select Administrator controls then "reset tripwire" using cursors and spa"We kill people based on metadata" @@ -778,9 +790,9 @@ Even when using Freedombone metadata analysis by third parties is still possible
ssh username@domainname -p 2222@@ -836,9 +848,9 @@ Spamassassin is also available and within Mutt you can use the S (shift+s) key t
If you run the command:
@@ -861,9 +873,9 @@ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/whats-my-ip/Suppose that some new encryption vulnerability has been announced and that you need to change your encryption settings. Maybe an algorithm thought to be secure is now no longer so and you need to remove it. You can change your settings by doing the following:
@@ -878,9 +890,9 @@ Select Administrator controls then select Security Settings. You wSuppose that you have bought a domain name (rather than using a free subdomain on freedns) and you want to use that instead.
@@ -944,9 +956,9 @@ You should now be able to send an email from postmaster@mynewdomainname aIf you did the full install or selected the social variant then the system will have tried to obtain a Let's Encrypt certificate automatically during the install process. If this failed for any reason, or if you have created a new site which you need a certificate for then do the following:
@@ -965,9 +977,9 @@ One thing to be aware of is that Let's Encrypt doesn't support many dynamic DNSNormally certificates will be automatically renewed once per month, so you don't need to be concerned about it. If anything goes wrong with the automatic renewal then you should receive a warning email.
@@ -986,9 +998,9 @@ Select Administrator controls then Security settings then RenewMost likely it's because Let's Encrypt doesn't support your particular domain or subdomain. Currently free subdomains tend not to work. You'll need to buy a domain name, link it to your dynamic DNS account and then do:
@@ -1003,17 +1015,17 @@ Select Administrator controls then Security settings then CreatThat pledge is utterly worthless. Years ago people trusted Google in the same sort of way, because they promised not be be evil and because a lot of the engineers working for them seemed like honest types who were "on our side". Post-nymwars and post-PRISM we know exactly how much Google cared about the privacy and security of its users. But Google is only one particular example. In general don't trust pledges made by companies, even if the people running them seem really sincere.
Welcome to the world of email. Email is really the archetypal decentralized service, developed during the early days of the internet. In principle anyone can run an email server, and that's exactly what you're doing with Freedombone. Email is very useful, but it has a big problem, and that's that the protocols are totally insecure. That made it easy for spammers to do their thing, and in response highly elaborate spam filtering and blocking systems were developed. Chances are that your emails are being blocked in this way. Sometimes the blocking is so indisciminate that entire countries are excluded. What can you do about it? Unless you control the block list at the receiving end you may not be able to do much unless you can find an email proxy server which is trusted by the receiving server.
@@ -1044,9 +1056,9 @@ So the situation with email presently is pretty bad, and there's a clear selectiIf you can find some details for an obfs4 Tor bridge (its IP address, port number and key or nickname) then you can set up the system to use it to connect to the Tor network. Unlike relay nodes the IP addresses for bridges are not public information and so can't be easily known and added to block lists by authoritarian regimes or over-zealous ISPs.
@@ -1071,9 +1083,9 @@ You can also set your system to act as a Tor bridge, although this is not recommIf you're being pestered by some domain which contains bad/illegal/harrassing content or irritating users you can block domains at the firewall level. Go to the administrator control panel and select domain blocking. You can then block, unblock and view the list of blocked domains.
@@ -1088,9 +1100,9 @@ Select Administrator controls then Domain blocking.If the system doesn't boot and reports an error which includes /dev/mapper/loop0p1 then reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Del and when you see the grub menu press e and manually change /dev/mapper/loop0p1 to /dev/sdb1, then press Ctrl-x. If that doesn't work then reboot and try /dev/sdc1 instead.
@@ -1101,9 +1113,9 @@ After the system has booted successfully the problem should resolve itself on suSometimes after boot the mesh system won't connect to other peers on the network. If this happens select the network restart icon and enter the password, which by default is just "freedombone". Wait for a few minutes to see if it connects.