Okay.
So now that we have a basic understanding on how bitcoins work and how cryptocurrencies work in general,
in the next lectures, I want to walk you through how to use cryptocurrencies and specifically bitcoins
anonymously on the Internet and on the darknet.
Now, first, before we can do anything, we have to create a wallet.
What we mean by wallet is it's software that's going to hold our money or our cryptocurrency.
Then we can use this wallet to send payments, receive payments, and so on.
So you can think of it similar to the bank account that you get when you sign up with a bank or the
dashboard that you get when you sign up with PayPal.
Now there are a lot of web based wallets where you can access your currency online using a web browser.
There are apps that you can get on your phones, and there are programs that you can install on your
desktop computers.
Now, since we're using tails, we're going to be using a wallet called electron that comes preinstalled
entails.
This is very important because as we know, Thales is a live operating system.
It's amnesic.
So if you install external programs, you'll have to install them every time you start Thales and less
persistence is enabled.
Another cool thing about Electron is it's really fast.
It doesn't need to download the whole blockchain, which is pretty big.
It uses an indexed version of it so you can use it as soon as you download or launch the program.
And the wallets that you create with electron can be used from separate computers.
So for example, if you destroy your Thales build, you can just go to another Thales and be able to
restore your account and I'll show you how to do that later on in the course.
Now let's go to Thales.
And all of this will become much easier to understand as we do this practically.
So the like I said, electron comes pre-installed with tails, so you don't need to install it and you
can access it by going to applications, internet and click on electron.
Now recently, a very dangerous vulnerability was discovered in a previous version of Electron, but
this version was shipped with tails.
And even though tails has been updated multiple times since that version, electron did not get updated
because the latest version of Electron still doesn't have a Debian build, which is what tails is built
on.
So in this lecture, I'm going to show you how to manually install the latest version of Electron.
And in the next lecture, we're actually going to use it now for you.
In your case, you can launch it from here and follow what I'm going to show you in the next lecture.
If the program gets stuck, then that means tails still doesn't include the latest version of Electron.
And you'll have to come back to this lecture and install the latest version, as I'm going to show you
right now.
Now, to download the latest version of Electron, you need to go to their website electron dot org.
I'll include that in the resources.
We're going to go to downloads.
And we're going to select the Linux image, the app image right here.
One click and we're going to click on Save File and this will automatically be stored in our Tor browser
directory.
That's fine.
And I'm going to click on Save and this will start downloading it for me.
I'm also going to download the signature right here, so I'm going to right click this and save link
as and again, this is going to my Tor browser directory.
I'm going to click on Save and I'm going to scroll down.
And I'm going to download the developer's public key by right clicking save link as.
And again, it's going to go into my downloads and I'm going to click on Save.
The reason why I downloaded the signature for the installer and the public key of the developer, Thomas,
is because, like I explained earlier, when you download something from the internet, it can be modified
by a number of entities.
Therefore, where we downloaded the signature and we downloaded the public key of the developer and
we're going to use the public key of the developer and the signature to verify that the file has not
been tampered with since we downloaded it, since the developer signed it.
I've actually explained how this works in details in my encryption section.
So go back and revise that if this sounds a little bit vague, but basically right now I'm pretty sure
the downloads are over.
And if we go to my Tor browser directory, you'll see I have the program itself, this is Electrum,
this is the executable.
And we also have the signature for this program that has the exact same name as the program with the
DOT ISC extension.
And I have Thomas V dot a C file, which is the public key of the developer that made this program.
So before I can do anything, I have to import this key right here to my keychain.
And I showed you how to do that before.
So I'm going to do it quickly.
I'm going to go to my applications.
I'm going to go to passwords and keys.
I'm going to go to file.
Import and I'm going to select the file, which is in my Tor browser, and it's this file right here.
Thomas V dot ISC.
Click on open, verify the details, click on import and this will import his key for me and to verify
that I can go here and just look for Thomas.
And as we can see, we have the developer key in here.
So now, now that we have the key added, we can click on the signature right click it and open with
verify signature.
And this will give us a positive result if this executable right here did not get modified, since Thomas,
the guy with the key, has created this executable.
So we're going to click on Verify.
And as you can see, it's telling us that this is valid.
And like I explained before, don't worry about the untrusted part as long as it says it's valid.
This means that the file did not get modified since it got signed by Thomas.
So now we can go ahead and run this file and not worry about it because we know the file did not get
modified since Thomas signed it.
But before we do that, I'm actually going to copy this.
And I'm going to put it in my persistent directory.
So I'm going to right click here and paste.
And the reason why I'm doing this, because, like, we know tails is live, it's amnesic.
So every time we restart, all the files will be lost unless they are stored in the persistent directory.
Now, if you don't have the persistent directory, that means persistence is not enabled for you.
I cover this previously in the course, so please go back to that lecture and see how to enable this.
Now also, before using electron, I'm going to go to applications and tails.
We're going to click on Configure Persistence.
I did cover this before, but I want you to make sure that personal data is enabled and if we scroll
down, bitcoin client is enabled as well.
And the reason why we need the settings.
So when we create a wallet, the wallet information will be stored on this computer.
So when we restart we won't have to restore the wallet every time.
We'll just have to put the password.
So I'm going to close this because everything is configured properly for me.
And one last step, because I can run executables on Thales.
This is a security measure that comes with Thales.
You'll need to right click the file, go to its properties, go to permissions, and you need to check
this box that says allow executing file as program.
We're going to close this.
And now every time you want to run electron, don't go to applications, internet come to persistence
and double click this executable.
Now, as you can see, the program has started.
Now it doesn't have any wallets.
That's why it's not asking us for a password or anything.
But right now it's ready to be used.
And in the next lecture, I'm going to walk you through the basics of this program, and we're going
to create our first Bitcoin wallet.