How to perform the Backup Procedure
First, plug in your 3 usb keys into your computer and then make sure that they are attached to the Whonix Workstation VM:
Then once you verified that the USB sticks are detected from the VM, you can start to backup your critical data inside the veracrypt volumes:
And then after backing up your critical data, you can unmount the hidden volume, to mount the decoy volume instead, where you'll write a diary entry (that way you'll be able to justify why the overall veracrypt volume changed):
Now that's done, unmount the decoy volume, and use the following backup.sh script to backup your diary veracrypt volume to the 3 usb sticks:
[user ~]% vim backup.sh
[user ~]% cat backup.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo 'creating all 3 usb mount directories...'
sudo mkdir /mnt/usb1
sudo mkdir /mnt/usb2
sudo mkdir /mnt/usb3
echo 'mounting all 3 usb sticks...'
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb1
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb2
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb3
echo 'copying the diary file on all 3 usb sticks...'
sudo cp -r /home/user/diary /mnt/usb1/diary
sudo cp -r /home/user/diary /mnt/usb2/diary
sudo cp -r /home/user/diary /mnt/usb3/diary
echo 'copying completed, hence unmounting all 3 usb sticks...'
sudo umount /mnt/usb1
sudo umount /mnt/usb2
sudo umount /mnt/usb3
echo 'remote backup to a VPS rented anonymously...'
torsocks scp /home/user/diary user@yourremotevpsaddress.onion:/root/diary:
[user ~]% chmod +x backup.sh
[user ~]% ./backup.sh
Run the script, and you'll now have your critical data backed up on your Remote VPS, and it's on the 3 usb keys.
And now you can unplug the 3 usb keys, and scatter them in 3 different places that you can easily access. You can hide them in your bag, in your car, and bury one in your garden for example. Get creative, but make sure that you can easily retrieve those usb keys back for next week's backup.
However be careful if you intend to hide those usb keys in public places that are not yours (where you normally never go to either), you need to make sure that you are going there without a cellphone on you. As otherwise the adversary would see that your phone has gone to a novel place that you have never been to before, And that gives them hints regarding where you might've hidden the usb keys.
Here for instance, the adversary wouldn't see your movements in pink, the only clues they'd have are the movements in red that they can anyway see from their dashboards. However it doesn't stop there, if you actually are a high value target you should instead backup to remote VPSes exclusively, as the authorities will most likely find every physical clues you might leave behind, (you might need to take into account satellite and public covert surveillance too)
If you don't want to leave any physical clues behind and stick to digital backups alone, you're going to need to rent 3 cheap remote VPSes in 3 different datacenter locations, from 3 different cloud providers, by using 3 different non-KYC cloud reseller accounts. To know how to rent a VPS anonymously, check out this tutorial:
Hence your backup.sh script would look like so:
[user ~]% vim backup.sh
[user ~]% cat backup.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo 'remote backup to VPSes rented anonymously...'
torsocks scp /home/user/diary user@remotevpsaddressA:/root/diary:
torsocks scp /home/user/diary user@remotevpsaddressB:/root/diary:
torsocks scp /home/user/diary user@remotevpsaddressC:/root/diary:
[user ~]% chmod +x backup.sh
[user ~]% ./backup.sh
With this second approach, the adversary will only be able to find your laptop, and they'll get the impression that you didn't try to make any backups.
Sidenote: Help us improve this tutorial by letting us know if there's anything missing or incorrect on this git issue directly!
