Privacy-oriented Linux OS Tails 3.9 is out, what’s new?

The popular Debian-based distribution Tails “The Amnesiac Incognito Live System” is out. The Tails 3.9 is available online with the biggest updates this year.

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.

Get Tails 3.9

To install, follow our installation instructions.
To upgrade, automatic upgrades are available from 3.7.1, 3.8, and 3.9~rc1 to 3.9.If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.
Download Tails 3.9.

Tails 3.10 is expected on October 23, 2018.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Securi ty Affairs – 3.9, privacy)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.