NAILS: a NixOS anti-forensics tool

Thanks

It currently integrates quite deeply with NixOS and makes use of a few advanced features like impermanence (Lets you choose what files and directories you want to keep between reboots - the rest are thrown away.) Impermanence basically the majority of your files are only getting saved to tmpfs (RAM) and are getting wiped on each boot.

The same or a similar concept could work on most modern Linux systems but one would need to tweak the current implementation.

I chose NixOS as a base since I personally believe it to be a great match for this use case (border police etc) because of the declarative nature which enables users to reinstall their system in a few minutes. It also enables users to have a clean configuration of their whole system which can be audited by professionals in an easy way in a relatively short time by giving them your configuration files (not the whole computer). This makes users less vulnerable.

The drawback of using NixOS as a base is that it doesn’t have full, native SELinux support (and similar things). People are working on it but it’s not ready yet.