Discreete Linux is an operating system with the special purpose of protecting data (more precisely: people) against surveillance attacks with trojan software.
Since Edward Snowden has revealed the extent of the global surveillance of the world's population by governments and intelligence agencies, this threat has continued to grow. Besides the general monitoring of the Internet traffic, these activities in many countries also include targeted Trojan attacks on systems of politically unwelcome citizens or organizations. These attacks are often used by authorities to access sensitive data that is stored locally and encrypted on the computer and is not transmitted over the Internet or only in encrypted form.
With the QUANTUMTHEORY / FOXACID project, the Snowden documents showed a worldwide system of automated trojan infections. In the slides for the TURBINE project, the NSA states that it is designed to control Trojan infections "automated in millions of computers" - and that was the state of 2009. Today numerous commercial providers of surveillance tools are also selling Trojan software to dictatorships and states that proclaim torture.
The Discreete Linux project has the goal to provide a protection against these attacks for whistleblowers, human rights defenders, journalists, trade union and political activists and other targets of surveillance. It is therefore designed for ease of use by people without deeper computer knowledge but high security requirements. It creates a secure, isolated environment for processing and encrypting/decrypting sensitive data.
Even strong end-to-end encryption becomes worthless if the attacker can control the systems that perform the encryption. Discreete Linux brings the endpoints of encrypted communication out of reach of trojan attacks.
Discreete Linux is a free software project. Anyone finding it useful can use it free of charge and with all rights provided by the GPL (GNU General Public License). Users are encouraged to send suggestions, bug reports and criticism to us.
The ISO-Image can be downloaded here (Please note that Discreete is still in Beta stadium and not ready for productive use). The Discreete developers can neither guarantee that the download servers never get compromised, nor can we guarantee that downloads are not being redirected to other servers by DNS spoofing or similar. We therefore strongly recommend to verify the authenticity of the image using our GPG-Signature.
If you prefer to build the Discreete Linux system yourself for full control over the final result or for custom configuration - you can find the tutorials for this here.
Discreete is a word crossrooted from the English terms "discreet" (confidential, inconspicuous, no traces left behind) and "discrete" (detached, separated from [here: unsafe networks and devices]) which characterize the purpose and function of Discreete Linux. Discreete Linux is the new name and the continuation of the project "Ubuntu Privacy Remix", which has existed since 2008. Meanwhile it is based on Debian Linux. The whole project is run by volunteers, is completely free software and verifiable in the sourcecode.
How Discreete Linux originated from the UPR project.