Hi Larry,

I would also be interested in the CERN Howto on building a Live CD.  I have my own script for building my own SL Live CD.  The live CD is not as full fledged as Urs'; I use the live image only for embedded purposes, but one can always learn new tricks.  Please post the URL when you get a chance.

I share Urs' opinion that an up-to-date Linux box is secure enough for online banking.

Ken


Urs Beyerle wrote:
> Hi Larry,
> 
> some comments from my side ...
> 
> First, good to hear that you like the SL LiveCD.
> 
> The LiveCD is just build after SL releases a new version. Normally the
> LiveCD is not updated afterwards. You have to wait for the next SL
> release to get an updated LiveCD.
> 
> The LiveCD comes with a write/read file system. All changes are written
> to RAM. Just run "yum update" and the software on the LiveCD will be
> updated. This can take some time depending on your internet connection
> and age of your LiveCD and maybe fill up your memory or maybe not. Or
> you can just run "yum update firefox" to get the latest firefox. Because
> all changes are stored in memory, after a reboot they are lost again.
> 
> However, you can save the changes on an USB stick, see
> http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/save.html
> 
> This should lead to an uptodate LiveCD. One thing you cannot do: You
> cannot update the kernel of a LiveCD.
> 
> Editing the LiveCD iso image would be theoretically possible, but I
> would not do it, because the data is stored in a special way
> (compressed, etc.)
> 
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
>      Urs
> 
> 
> PS. I would be interested in the CERN excellent Howto of building an own
> live CD.
> PS. I use for internet banking an uptodate Linux installation. In my
> option this is enough secure.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> P. Larry Nelson wrote:
>> Hi all, the following article has convinced me to go the Live CD route
>> when doing online banking.  I had been using a squeaky-clean and
>> bare-bones
>> Windows XP installation (and the latest Firefox) as a guest OS in VMware,
>> but even that method, I've read, has potential security issues.
>> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/10/avoid_windows_malware_bank_on.html
>>
>>
>> To that end, I've downloaded and burned my first LiveCD (SL 4.8)
>> and have been playing around with it - quite slick, I must say!
>>
>> However, it has raised some questions, particularly in regards to what
>> I'm using it for.  First (probably a Troy/Connie question), how often
>> do security updates get incorporated into the ISO image?  For example,
>> there was just a security fix for xpdf/gpdf and the firefox in the
>> SL4.8 LiveCD certainly does not have the latest bug fixes.
>>
>> And if the ISO image doesn't get updated then what's the best course
>> for maintaining a patched LiveCD?  I know that one can build one's own
>> LiveCD, and the CERN site has an excellent Howto, so conceivably I could
>> build one and keep it up to date with the latest bug/security fixes,
>> but I'm also aware that there seems to be software out there that will
>> let one edit ISO images to extract or add files (ISO Master for Linux
>> is one I found, but not tried).
>>
>> Any thoughts on this and/or does anyone have experience editing an ISO
>> image?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> - Larry
>>