[Tails-dev] Why Tails partition is non-deterministic?

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Author: Joanna Rutkowska
Date:  
To: tails-dev
Subject: [Tails-dev] Why Tails partition is non-deterministic?
Hello,

Is there any special reason why the partition where Tails installs itself is
non-deterministic? It is thanks to differing timestamps on the filesystem.

This posses a problem for a prudent user who would like to be able to verify
Tails integrity, e.g. by typing:

dd if=/dev/sda1 | sha1sum

This might be especially useful if one uses the stick on various computers and
would like to verify if her USB stick holding Tails installs hasn't been
modified (e.g. by a malicious BIOS). Yes, I'm aware that the first sector of the
disk (/dev/sda) would still differ thanks to different partition sizes.

Thanks,
joanna.