ResidueFree

Presented at DEF CON 30 (2022), Aug. 13, 2022, 2 p.m. (115 minutes)

ResidueFree is a privacy-enhancing tool that allows individuals to keep sensitive information off their device's filesystem. It takes on-device privacy protections from TAILS and "incognito" web browser modes and applies them to any app running on a user's regular operating system, effectively making the privacy protections offered by TAILS more usable and accessible while improving the on-device privacy guarantees made by web browsers and extending them to any application. While ResidueFree currently runs on Linux, its maintainers are hoping to port it to other operating systems in the near future. In addition, ResidueFree can help forensic analysts and application security engineers isolate filesystem changes made by a specific application. The same implementation ResidueFree uses to ensure that any file changes an application makes are not stored to disk can also be used to isolate those changes to a separate folder without impacting the original files.

Audience: ResidueFree was primarily developed for individuals facing privacy threats that can access the information stored on the individuals' device. However, this presentation is also designed for security trainers that want to expand the tools they can suggest as well as for privacy engineers interested in contributing to ResidueFree or expanding it to more commonly used operating systems. ResidueFree also has features built for malware or forensic analysts, application security engineers, or others who wish to easily isolate an application's changes to a device's filesystem with a simple tool.


Presenters:

  • Logan Arkema
    Logan is a former student-turned-independent researcher and software developer. While he makes a living conducting IT, security, and privacy audits, his most impactful hacking is 1337ing his job's policies as a union rep to elevate workplace privileges. He has an OSCP, other certs from days wooing federal hiring screeners to pass along his application, and The Time Warp stuck in his head from the time he heard "rm -rf" could be pronounced "rimm raff."

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