Read only or not, it's still accessible. I don't need to write to things, to have the ablitly to start copying your data.

however as root, the command mount -o rw <insert target drive> is a thing as well.

Keypass has stuff in memory, not hard to do a memory dump as root.

As for the power user... At DerbyCON, lots of clue full people there, a network scan turned up over 100 backtrack boxes with default login creds of root /toor.

Like I hinted before, if you want to be serious about it. Load TAILS.

More secure than what? a soggy napkin? If you want secure, run a stripped down gentoo or *BSD box with only the bare necessities, no compiler, services disabled, FDE, etc. BT5 not only runs as root (yes you can change but, I run a BT5 VM with a locked down user and su when I need root but it's still very insecure) but has so much cruft installed you will have an extremely hard time making it secure. That's not what it's designed for. Choose the right tools for the job. Hell I'm pretty sure my Windows 7 box the way I have it locked down is more secure than most BT5 installs.

I guess that depends on your definition of "outdated" then. A 10.x release is obviously not going to have all the bells and whistles as a 12.x release, but it's not unsupported or neglected either.

Back to the main topic, BackTrack really shouldn't be used as a "secure" distro since that's not its purpose. As mentioned by others, it has numerous changes that make it less secure right out of the gate (default password of toor, root SSH login enabled, etc.) Are you really going to change your password and disable root SSH logins every time you launch the live CD? Why would you even want to deal with having to harden your system every time you boot it? Spend $8 on another thumb drive and use a distro that's designed for security.

Tried out T.A.I.L.S it's cool and user friendly but it lacks wine and truecrypt. So I still would say backtrack 5 r3 is a better choice if your only going to use a live cd.

You can install other packages as you need them. Sine T.A.I.L.S. is already dvd sized, it would be worth a try to contact the dev to install those in the next version of the dvd.

I wrote the developers I doubt we will see Wine on T.A.I.L.S.
Aslo the developers do not like truecrypt

"... Tails developers do not recommend TrueCrypt. We include TrueCrypt only to allow users of the (old and now unsupported) Incognito live system to access the data on previously created media. In the future, we would like to provide proper alternatives and stop distributing TrueCrypt. This means that you should not create new TrueCrypt media if you intend to stay with Tails in the long run."
I would say that backtrack 5 R3 is still the best choice at the moment

Please add Wine and TrueCrypt
Inbox
   x
Hudson Seiler <>
   
Dec 25 (1 day ago)
      
to tails-dev
Hello recently I wrote an article about avoiding banking trojans and bots on http://www.ethicalhacker.net using Backtrack 5 r3 live cd. I thought that Backtrack 5 r3 was okay for the power user, but not the common user. Then I was told about Tails my only complaint with it is the lack of Wine and TrueCrypt. It would be awsome if you could add Wine and TrueCrypt to the live cd.

article
http://www.ethicalhacker.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,54/topic,9571.0/

sincerely,
Hudson Seiler

Reply

   
5:27 PM (4 hours ago)
      
to Tails, me
> Truecrypt is very useful indeed, but it can be installed on Tails,
> simply download the tar.gz package from truecrypt.org and execute the
> script, it will install it.
>
> I also recommend to the development team that truecrypt should be
> included by default and come with the DVD already.

TrueCrypt is already included in Tails, please refer to the doc:

https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_and_privacy/truecrypt/.

Regarding Wine, Tails is not meant to be a general purpose operating
system but a selection of tools designed to answer some particular use
cases, see our design doc:

https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/

Apart from the fact that I really doubt we want to encourage people
running probably non-free software through Wine. How would Wine help us
fulfil better our goals?