Pierluigi Paganini
September 08, 2018
A new version of the popular Debian-based distribution Tails “The Amnesiac Incognito Live System” is out. The Tails version 3.9 is available online, the privacy-oriented operating system gets its biggest update, many issues were fixed and new features were added to protect user privacy and anonymity online.
TAILS does not store information on the host Hard Disk, it is loaded entirely into RAM. This means that shutting down the machine all the data in RAM is deleted in a few minutes, leaving no trace on the system. To prevent Cold Boot Attack that allows experts to extract the content of the RAM memory before it will be deleted, but TAILS overwrites memory space with random data when shutting down the distro.
Tails 3.9 relies on Linux kernel 4.17 that includes security patches for the Foreshadow attacks as well as updated Intel and AMD microcode firmware to address the latest Spectre and Meltdown security flaws.
The development for the Tails 3.9 lasted at least two months, some of the features implemented were anticipated during the last weeks, such as the integration of the VeraCrypt/TrueCrypt utilities.
Integrating VeraCrypt or TrueCrypt users can easily manage encrypted disk drives directly from the GNOME desktop environment.
VeraCrypt integration comes with the recently released GNOME 3.30 desktop environment, unlock VeraCrypt encrypted volumes in Tails 3.9 is very easy. Users can access the new Unlock VeraCrypt Volumes dialog from Applications > System Tools. The features support both TrueCrypt or VeraCrypt open-source disk encryption format.
Another feature implemented in the Tails 3.9 is the automatically installation for additional software.
This means that the distro will automatically install software updates when starting up the PC. Users could decide to install future updates of an app, and manage automatically updated apps from the menu entry Applications > System Tools > Additional Software.
Tails 3.9 includes Mozilla Thunderbird 60 as new default RSS and Atom news feed reader instead of Liferea, and the TOR Browser 8.0 anonymous web browser based on Firefox 60 ESR.
Tails 3.10 is expected on October 23, 2018.
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(Security Affairs – 3.9, privacy)
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