Corporate Laptop Question

So I may get a corporate laptop. It'll be Windows XP, and I'll use a smartcard to connect to VPN. There are obviously rules to the laptop, one of which is don't install things.

So...if I were to use an Ubuntu Live USB stick...what would happen? I'm 99% certain everything would work just fine, but I'm worried that things could still be traced back to me. The main reason to use this is to preload the Ubuntu Live USB stick with things like Skype/etc so I can have a usable laptop.

I'm very worried about the following:

1) Leaving traces of ubuntu on the HDD. Is there a way to configure the USB stick to not recognize the HDD in the first place? I also don't want to accidentaly install ubuntu...I know I'm being paranoid, probably.

2) Logs somewhere about what I'm doing. I don't know how this could be, I'm running Ubuntu right after BIOS, so unless the BIOS runs some tracking software, I should be fine?

I'm probably blowing their security measures out of proportion...

Advice? I'm not using it for anything bad, I'm not worried, I'd just rather be free to use the laptop however I wish on my own time rather than bringing an extra laptop on a trip because I can't skype my family from my work laptop...

Thanks.

 

just put another hdd for personal use or if there is no place switch them or use 2-nd hdd caddy in without optical bay. Not sure I understood your situation. You afraid corporate will find you with their laptop or that they will find out that you used it for private things and installed smth?

 

The latter. It's really a pain in the butt to put in a new HDD each time I want to fire up skype.

But I figure using a USB as a 2nd HDD should be fine?

 

Ubuntu live USB leaves no trace just bring a USB HDD for your personal files and you will be good. but remember it wont be very fast.

 

Ok that's good news. Any way to have a large enough USB stick that it'll write to it? Or better to bring another USB stick and partition that as an HDD?

 

I have 2 programs to format USB flash to become a hdd partition if you need

 

Can't hurt, please feel free to PM.

 

what you want to do couldn't be easier.
buy a 4gb usb flash drive.
download live linux usb creator
install it
download the linux version you want in .iso format. (ubuntu 11.04 iso ? )
run livelinuxusb and it will format your usb drive and install linux.
make sure to choose persistence mode and type in a size (2048mb should do).

when you use the linux drive, persistance will let you install programs and save settings. It works great.

 

Nothing because IT will have disabled boot from USB.

 

Exactly, if you have a smart card for access to your computer there is virtually zero chance you are going to get access to the BIOS setup or change the boot drive. It's going to be locked down by IT.

 

btw, don't consider swapping hdds so you would have a private and a non-private one. the system should detect opening and the corporate os should report it to the admin. (and it should not boot from a non-allowed state)

so if they do it right, you can do nothing with the laptop. if they fail to do so, you can maybe use the usb live thing, maybe not. all depends.


edit: interestingly, the chance to just run an application in xp would be higher than booting from an usb stick. have to be the non-installer versions, of course. there's a big community around those. what's their name again? ...... i forgot it. help, anyone?

 

Have you considered just asking for permission/an exception to install Skype for this purpose?