Tails 1.0 is out

https://tails.boum.org/news/version_1.0/index.en.html

by conductor • 12 years ago

241 39 12 years ago

tails.boum.org

pella• 12 years ago

more info:

"Tails or The Amnesic Incognito Live System is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity. It is the next iteration of development on the previous Gentoo-based Incognito Linux distribution. All its outgoing connections are forced to go through Tor, and direct (non-anonymous) connections are blocked. The system is designed to be booted as a live DVD or live USB, and will leave no trace (digital footprint) on the machine unless explicitly told to do so. The Tor Project has provided most of the financial support for development. Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman have each said that Tails was an important tool they used in their work with Edward Snowden"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_(operating_system)

flip_do• 12 years ago

Thanks for posting this! I know I can just google it, but since the link from this item does absolutely nothing to just say what the hell Tails actually is, I probably wouldn't have bothered. Glad you posted this because it's actually good stuff to know about!

pookieinc• 12 years ago

There was an interesting article a while back regarding Tails and Snowden's leak:

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tails/

This also has some good information about some practical uses of Tails. Not sure much about the claims of the article and their truths (was an entertaining read though), but it gives some further details about Tails for the inquiring mind.

diziet3• 12 years ago

For anyone seriously considering Tails, do invest either in a laptop with a dvd drive and run rails off non writable storage, or use something like a hardware switchable write usb: http://www.amazon.com/Kanguru-Solutions-Flash-Write-Protect-...

GimbalLock3• 12 years ago

Could you expound on why?

garrettgrimsley4• 12 years ago

An adversary could modify your image. It's possible that they could have your copy phone home through a non-anonymized route, revealing information about your identity.

They could also make it so that your route all information through their nodes, or eavesdrop through a built-in microphone or camera.

All sorts of nasty things, all with persistence between boots.

morsch• 12 years ago

It would be nice if their bootloader "just" loaded the entire image into RAM and let the user continue booting and running without the USB drive attached. Optical drives are on their way out, USB drives with a trustworthy write switch are obscure (if they exist at all) and this seems quite secure. I'm using scare quotes because I don't know how difficult this is.

BuildTheRobots2• 12 years ago

Tip: Most laptops have an SD card reader and most full size SDs still have write switches.

Also as SystemRescueCD does a load to RAM so it's certainly doable :)

mikepurvis• 12 years ago

It's quite common, though typically done for performance reasons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_tha...

I agree that this seems like the best compromise: Have the bootloader load the squashfs (or whatever) to RAM, and then unmount and prompt you to remove the media before executing the kernel. In order to compromise that, you'd have to corrupt the process which creates the flash drive originally; if that's been achieved then it's game over regardless.

nwh• 12 years ago

Internally they're fairly common. You can probably take a normal USB drive and find the write protect pin on the datasheet.

moe• 12 years ago

and running without the USB drive attached

That's how the Debian boot image works by default. You actually have to jump through some hoops to enable persistence.

So unless tails actively tries to be stupid it should be safe to remove the drive after the squashfs has been loaded during boot.

garrettgrimsley4• 12 years ago

Do note that write-protect switches often only ask that software not write to the drive (Host protect), and are not sufficient to protect against a malicious entity.

Unless an examination revealed otherwise it is wise to assume that the write protection media is a software protection, not a hardware protection.

http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4248/how-reliabl...

diziet3• 12 years ago

I'd read that same SE thread a while back and concluded that write protect drive switches is a good solution I could trust!

joosters• 12 years ago

SD cards have a physical switch to write-protect them, but the logic & protection is done in software.

For example, there's a project that provides replacement firmware for Canon cameras - http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK - stored on the SD card. The new firmware is selected by moving the write-protect switch on the card. In either configuration, the camera can still save new photos to the storage.

Crito• 12 years ago

You can get USB DVD drives pretty cheap these days. Probably not the most performant, but much cheaper than buying a new laptop.

StavrosK• 12 years ago

Can't you get one of those U3 drives that appear as a USB DVD drive? It requires loads of time and special software to reflash, but I'm not sure if they're available any more.

Then again, a malicious actor may just go through the trouble of bypassing the protections.

ef47d35620c1• 12 years ago

You could also remove the hard drive. It's very easy to do and would prevent any accidental write.

secfirstmd• 12 years ago

If you are going to use it on a DVD drive or otherwise then make sure your update it regularly (ie: download and burn a new DVD etc) to make sure your OS and various tools have the latest patches. Otherwise you are much more vulnerable. All the time people forget and end up using a very old version.

sirsar• 12 years ago

The planned update to Wheezy is important because it brings an update to OpenSSL. Updating OpenSSL on Squeeze is time-consuming and buggy, and a later version is required to run several software packages including Bitmessage.

jafaku• 12 years ago

Does it make sense to run a Tails Virtualbox VM under a Linux host? (eg: Fedora)

PostOnce• 12 years ago

No, the host isn't read-only, so if you have malware (which can see the VM and what its doing) you're fucked.

If you boot into tails, it's read-only.

Raticide• 12 years ago

Only if you trust the host machine 100%. But you can never trust the host machine 100%.

opnitro• 12 years ago

If you did why would you be using TAILS?

autodidakto• 12 years ago

That's the use case of Whonix.

http://whonix.org

egeozcan• 12 years ago

Didn't know about this Physical Isolation feature[0] before. Does anyone have any idea how reliable this is?

[0] https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Dev/Build_Documentation/Physical...

conradev• 12 years ago

I can't wait for the pending UEFI support[1] so that I can use the official installer for Tails and boot with my Mac. Currently I have to use a custom installer[2] to get it to work.

[1] https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/UEFI/

[2] https://github.com/hellais/TAILS-OSX

gnur• 12 years ago

Please don't start using it as your permanent OS. As soon as you start regular browsing in tails you are overdoing it.

Tails is excellent for posting anonymous information to the internet, as long as it is a one time thing. If you first browsed reddit, read your (g)mail or looked at facebook, you are still quite easily identifiable!

sourcex• 12 years ago

Did Edward Snowden really use it ?

lucastx• 12 years ago

Yes, according to this Wired article: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tails/

Tails 1.0 is out

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