Tails (operating system)

History

Tails was first released on June 23, 2009. It is the next iteration of development on Incognito, a discontinued Gentoo-based Linux distribution. The original project was called Amnesia. The operating system was born when Amnesia was merged with Incognito. The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project. Tails also received funding from the Open Technology Fund, Mozilla, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Schneier and Barton Gellman have each said that Tails was an important tool they used in their work with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

From release 3.0 (2017) onwards, Tails requires a 64-bit processor to run.

In 2023, the Tails Project approached the Tor Project to merge operations. The merger was completed on September 26, 2024, stating that, "By joining forces, the Tails team can now focus on their core mission of maintaining and improving Tails OS, exploring more and complementary use cases while benefiting from the larger organizational structure of The Tor Project."

Features

Tails's pre-installed desktop environment is GNOME. The system includes essential software for functions such as reading and editing documents, image editing, video watching and printing. Other software from Debian can be installed at the user's behest. Despite being open-source, Tails contains non-free firmware blobs.

Tails includes a unique variety of software that handles the encryption of files and internet transmissions, cryptographic signing and hashing, Electrum Bitcoin Wallet, Aircrack-ng and other functions important to security. It is pre-configured to use Tor with multiple connection options. It tries to force all connections to use Tor and blocks connection attempts outside Tor. For networking, it features a modified version of Tor Browser with the inclusion of uBlock Origin, instant messaging, email, file transmission and monitoring local network connections for security.

By design, Tails is "amnesic". It runs in the computer's random access memory (RAM) and does not write to a hard drive or other storage medium. The user may choose to keep files, applications or some settings on their Tails drive in "Persistent Storage". Though the Persistent Storage is encrypted by default, it is not hidden and easily detectable by forensic analysis. While shutting down, Tails overwrites most of the used RAM to avoid a cold boot attack.

Hardware support

Tails is based on Linux. Linux generally supports a wide range of hardware, including many older devices, due to standardized drivers. Yet, users may still face problems trying to use certain hardware with the system due to non-standardization or other issues (such as with graphics, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth or decreased security).

Using an AMD GPU with fully open source official AMD gpu driver support should in theory and technically give the users a better experience and possibly better security when compared to Nvidia whose Linux drivers are known to be subpar from the get-go and are in fact not included in Tails for being proprietary and closed source. Nvidia Linux drivers are switched for nouveau which is indeed open source but known to be much less stable and not official or endorsed by Nvidia in any way.

Security incidents

In 2014, Das Erste reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA)'s XKeyscore surveillance system sets threat definitions for people who search for Tails using a search engine or visit the Tails website. A comment in XKeyscore's source code calls Tails "a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums".

In the same year, Der Spiegel published slides from an internal NSA presentation dating to June 2012, in which the NSA deemed Tails on its own as a "major threat" to its mission and in conjunction with other privacy tools as "catastrophic".

In 2017, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used malicious code developed by Facebook, identifying sexual extortionist and Tails user Buster Hernandez through a zero-day vulnerability in the system's default video player, GNOME Videos. The exploit was never explained to or discovered by the Tails developers, but it is believed that the vulnerability was patched in a later release of Tails. Hernandez had eluded authorities for a long time; the FBI and Facebook had searched for him with no success, and resorted to developing the custom hacking tool. He was arrested in 2017, and in 2021 he was sentenced to 75 years in prison.

References

References

1. "Tails - Incremental upgrades".
2. "Tails - System requirements".
3. "Alternative Networks".
4. . ["Running Tails in a virtual machine"](https://tails.boum.org/doc/advanced_topics/virtualization/index.en.html).
5. Finley, Klint. (14 Apr 2014). "Out in the Open: Inside the Operating System Edward Snowden Used to Evade the NSA".
6. (4 April 2013). "Finances".
7. (14 Jun 2014). "Tails report for May, 2014".
8. Timm, Trevor. (2 Apr 2014). "Help Support the Little-Known Privacy Tool That Has Been Critical to Journalists Reporting on the NSA".
9. Condliffe, Jamie. (15 Apr 2014). "Try the Super-Secure USB Drive OS That Edward Snowden Insists on Using".
10. (October 11, 2013). "Air Gaps - Schneier on Security".
11. "Tails - Tails 3.0 is out".
12. "Tails - Uniting for Internet Freedom: Tor Project & Tails Join Forces".
13. Sawers, Paul. (2024-09-26). "The Tor Project merges with Tails, a Linux-based portable OS focused on privacy".
14. (7 October 2019). "APT repository".
15. (7 October 2019). "Features and included software".
16. "Explaining Why We Don't Endorse Other Systems".
17. "Browsing the web with Tor Browser".
18. "Tails - Creating and configuring the Persistent Storage".
19. "Tails - Memory erasure".
20. (2025-03-22). "The Battle for Wireless Drivers in Linux and BSD – OSnews".
21. (2017-07-28). "Why does Wi-Fi have to be such a pain in Linux? - LinuxQuestions.org".
22. Machado, André. (2024-11-14). "Nouveau vs. NVIDIA: The Battle Between Open-Source Ideals and Proprietary Performance on Linux".
23. (3 Jul 2014). "NSA targets the privacy-conscious".
24. [[Bruce Schneier]]. (3 Jul 2014). "NSA Targets Privacy Conscious for Surveillance". Schneier on Security.
25. Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo. (10 Jun 2020). "Facebook Helped the FBI Hack a Child Predator". [[Vice (magazine).
26. (28 Dec 2014). "Presentation from the SIGDEV Conference 2012 explaining which encryption protocols and techniques can be attacked and which not".
27. SPIEGEL Staff. (28 Dec 2014). "Prying Eyes: Inside the NSA's War on Internet Security". Der Spiegel.
28. (30 Apr 2012). "Tails 0.11 incognito live system released". [[The H]].
29. Gray, James. (16 Sep 2011). "The Tails Project's The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails)". [[Linux Journal]].
30. Vervloesem, Koen. (27 Apr 2011). "The Amnesic Incognito Live System: A live CD for anonymity". [[LWN.net]].
31. (6 Feb 2012). "Anonym im Netz". [[TecChannel]].