Previous Page

nihilist@mainpc - 2024-06-14

Tails OS QEMU VM for Temporary Anonymity

In this tutorial we're going to look at how you can run Tails OS (The Amnesic Incognito Linux System) in a QEMU VM, following the official documentation here.

TODO: setups where 1) isp doesnt allow tor traffic 2) isp doesnt allow tor, nor vpns, 3) setup where the destination website doesnt allow tor traffic

Tails Setup

First we download Tails OS as a USB image here:

Then we resize the image size to be able to contain persistant storage (in this case, i'll make it 8Gbs):

[ nowhere ] [ /dev/pts/8 ] [nihilist/VAULT/Isos]
→ ls tails-amd64-6.3.img -lash
1.4G -rw-r--r-- 1 nihilist nihilist 1.4G Jun 14 10:15 tails-amd64-6.3.img

[ nowhere ] [ /dev/pts/8 ] [nihilist/VAULT/Isos]
→ truncate -s 8192M tails-amd64-6.3.img 	

And now we can create the VM in virt-manager like so:

Then press enter to launch tails:

(wait a few seconds for it to load)

Once in there, depending on your use, you can select to have an admin password and a persistant storage if you need it. Otherwise everything you do in the VM will be wiped clean upon shutdown (hence the word amnesic).

Then we select connect to tor automatically:

And here we click start the Tor browser to browse the web anonymously, and if you're curious and want to see the tor Circuits you can view them also:

Persistant Storage Setup

Next, if you want to enable the persistant storage go there:

make sure you enter a strong password that can't be bruteforced easily:

then hit "create persistant storage" and wait a bit for the operation to complete:

Then adjust the settings as per your liking, if you want the persistant storage to store more than it does by default:

Then if you want to install additional software you can launch a terminal:

Then from there you can use sudo because you enabled the administrator password, and install software:

amnesia@amnesia:~$ sudo apt update -y ; sudo apt install neofetch -y 
[sudo] password for amnesia:          
Get:1 tor+https://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease [151 kB] 
Get:2 tor+http://apow7mjfryruh65chtdydfmqfpj5btws7nbocgtaovhvezgccyjazpqd.onion/torproject.org bookworm InRelease [3,526 B]
Get:3 tor+https://cdn-fastly.deb.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease [48.0 kB]

[...]

Then once the software installed, you have the possibility to store it in the persistant storage aswell, so that it can be available when you launch tails again:

amnesia@amnesia:~$ neofetch
      ``                        amnesia@amnesia 
  ./yhNh                        --------------- 
syy/Nshh         `:o/           OS: Tails x86_64 
N:dsNshh  \u2588   `ohNMMd           Host: KVM/QEMU (Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009) pc-q35-9.0) 
N-/+Nshh      `yMMMMd           Kernel: 6.1.0-21-amd64 
N-yhMshh       yMMMMd           Uptime: 13 mins 
N-s:hshh  \u2588    yMMMMd so//.     Packages: 1854 (dpkg) 
N-oyNsyh       yMMMMd d  Mms.   Shell: bash 5.2.15 
N:hohhhd:.     yMMMMd  syMMM+   Resolution: 1280x800 
Nsyh+-..+y+-   yMMMMd   :mMM+   DE: GNOME 43.9 
+hy-      -ss/`yMMMM     `+d+   WM: Mutter 
  :sy/.     ./yNMMMMm      ``   WM Theme: Adwaita 
    .+ys- `:+hNMMMMMMy/`        Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
      `hNmmMMMMMMMMMMMMdo.      Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
       dMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNh:    Terminal: gnome-terminal 
       +hMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmy.   CPU: 11th Gen Intel i7-11700K (2) @ 3.600GHz 
         -oNMMMMMMMMMMmy+.`     GPU: 00:01.0 Red Hat, Inc. Virtio 1.0 GPU 
           `:yNMMMds/.`         Memory: 1313MiB / 3915MiB 
              .//`
                                                        

And that's it! We managed to run tails OS from a QEMU VM and install some software into the persistant storage.