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Tails 0.23 herunterladen March 19, 2014
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And the winner is...

Our logo contest ended up a few days ago. Since then, 11 regular Tails contributors voted on the 36 proposals.

Winner

The winning proposal is the one by Tchou.

We commented on the initial version and we already came up with an improved version:

Congratulations!

In the coming days we will keep on fine-tuning it and integrating it in time for Tails 1.0. So don't hesitate to comment on it.

Top 7

Six other great proposals made it to the top 7:

This PDF shows a graph of how many voters preferred a given proposal to another one.

We reiterate our thanks to the 31 designers who worked for this contest to be such a success.

Posted Sat 12 Apr 2014 08:23:45 PM CEST Tags:
Tails report for March, 2014

Releases

Tails 0.23 was released on March 19.

Metrics

  • Tails has been started more than 261 878 times in March. This make 8 448 boots a day in average.
  • 19 076 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO.
  • 80 reports were received through WhisperBack.

Code

Documentation and website

  • A new contribute page for sysadmins to improve the infrastructure behind Tails was written.

  • Our sample rtorrent.rc was improved. ticket #6995

  • A sample configuration for Tails mirror using nginx was added. ticket #6993

  • A "News" link was added to the sidebar.

  • The expectations for our mirrors in terms of bandwidth were clarified.

  • The instructions to securely delete the persistent volume were improved.

  • The instructions to manually backup the persistent volume were fixed.

  • gpgApplet was renamed "Tails OpenPGP Applet".

  • "Tails browser" was consistently renamed "Tor browser". ticket #6574

  • Our list of related projects was updated:

  • The content of our Troubleshooting page was merging into the main Support page.

  • Email commands to interact with Redmine were documented.

  • The documentation for MAC spoofing was completed.

Translation

  • The German team which started to work earlier this year, got more volunteers on board and more work done.

  • People volunteered on the tails-l10n mailing-list to translate our website into Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and Portuguese (Portugal).

Infrastructure

On-going discussions

Funding

Outreach

  • We organized a logo contest to have a new logo in time for Tails 1.0. We received 36 proposals! Tails contributors started to vote on their favourite proposals.

  • We scheduled two usability testing sessions together with Silicon Sentier on May 21 and May 28 in Paris.

  • We scheduled a public hackfest. It will take place at IRILL (Paris, France) on July 5 and 6.

  • We made progress on the organization of the 2014 edition of the yearly Tails contributors summit. We could make use of more funding sources.

Press and testimonials

Posted Sat 12 Apr 2014 06:24:31 PM CEST
Tails 0.23 is out

Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.23, is out.

All users must upgrade as soon as possible: this release fixes numerous security issues.

Changes

Notable user-visible changes include:

  • Security fixes

    • Upgrade the web browser to 24.4.0esr-0+tails1~bpo60+1 (Firefox 24.4.0esr + Iceweasel patches + Torbrowser patches).

  • Major new features

  • Bugfixes

    • Additional software: do not crash when persistence is disabled.
    • Upgrade Pidgin to 2.10.9, that fixes some regressions introduced in the 2.10.8 security update.
    • Wait for Tor to have fully bootstrapped, plus a bit more time, before checking for upgrades and unfixed known security issues.
    • Disable the Intel Management Engine Interface driver. We don't need it in Tails, it might be dangerous, and it causes bugs on various hardware such as systems that reboot when asked to shut down.
    • Add a launcher for the Tails documentation. This makes it available in Windows Camouflage mode.
    • Remove the obsolete wikileaks.de account from Pidgin.

  • Minor improvements

    • Upgrade Tor to 0.2.4.21-1~d60.squeeze+1.
    • Upgrade obfsproxy to 0.2.6-2~~squeeze+1.
    • Upgrade I2P to 0.9.11-1deb6u1.
    • Install 64-bit kernel instead of the 686-pae one. This is a necessary first step towards UEFI boot support.
    • Install Monkeysign (in a not-so-functional shape yet).
    • Disable the autologin text consoles. This was one of the blockers before a screen saver can be installed in a meaningful way.
    • Don't localize the text consoles anymore: it is broken on Wheezy, the intended users can as well use loadkeys, and we now do not have to trust setupcon to be safe for being run as root by the desktop user.
    • Make it possible to manually start IBus.
    • Reintroduce the possibility to switch identities in the Tor Browser, using a filtering proxy in front of the Tor ControlPort to avoid giving full control over Tor to the desktop user.
    • Incremental upgrades improvements:
      • Drop the Tails Upgrader launcher, to limit users' confusion.
      • Lock down sudo credentials a bit.
      • Hide debugging information.
      • Include ~/.xsession-errors in WhisperBack bug reports. This captures the Tails Upgrader errors and debugging information.
      • Report more precisely why an incremental upgrade cannot be done.
      • Various user interface and phrasing improvements.
    • Don't install the Cookie Monster browser extension.
    • Add a browser bookmark pointing to Tor's Stack Exchange.
    • Remove the preconfigured #tor channel from the Pidgin: apparently, too many Tails users go ask Tails questions there, without making it clear that they are running Tails, hence creating a user-support nightmare.
    • Use (most of) Tor Browser's mozconfig.
    • Rebase the browser on top of iceweasel 24.3.0esr-1, to get the certificate authorities added by Debian back.
    • Give access to the relevant documentation pages from Tails Greeter.
    • Hide Tails Greeter's password mismatch warning when entry is changed.
    • Persistent Volume Assistant:
      • Take into account our installer is now called Tails Installer.
      • Optimize window height.
      • Display device paths in a more user-friendly way.

See the online Changelog for technical details.

Known issues

I want to try it or to upgrade!

Go to the download page.

As no software is ever perfect, we maintain a list of problems that affects the last release of Tails.

What's coming up?

The next Tails release is scheduled for April 29.

Have a look to our roadmap to see where we are heading to.

Would you want to help? There are many ways you can contribute to Tails. If you want to help, come talk to us!

Posted Wed 19 Mar 2014 12:00:00 PM CET Tags:
Tails launches a logo contest

On the 29th of April, we will release Tails 1.0. This will be an important symbolic milestone about 5 years after our first public releases.

We want to have a great logo by then to give Tails the visual impact it deserves. The image and banner we have been using so far don't really do the job anymore...

So we're starting a contest for designers to create a logo for Tails. We have already brainstormed on the idea, and received some great proposals in the past. Still, we had a hard time making our collective mind on a single proposal, and wanted to give more people a chance.

Requirements

  • Free licence, compatible with GPL3+.
  • Source in SVG format.
  • An image with an approximate 1:1 ratio, like the onion logo.
  • Plus the same image along with the "Tails" word either:
    • merged with the image as in the Tor logo;
    • on the side of the image.
  • The "Tails" name must be spelled with an uppercase "T" only, and lowercase "ails".
  • The image should convey the ideas behind Tails: secrecy, privacy, anonymity, mystery, simplicity (Tails is ready-to-use).
  • The logo has to be a bit serious, but not sad.
  • Until now we reuse the colors from Tor (green and purple), but this can be changed.
  • We cannot reuse directly the Tor or Debian logo, but evoking it is ok (use Tor colors, or evoking the Debian swirl).
  • The image should be suited to print on nice stickers that people want to have on their computers, and on t-shirts that people are happy to wear.
  • Make sure that the fonts that you use are compatible with GPL3+. To be on the safe side, use fonts available in Debian main, otherwise we will ask you to prove their compatibility with GPL3+.

Complementary materials

As the logo will be used in quite different places, we encourage you to submit complementary materials. These are not strict requirements but will help us evaluate your proposal better. Besides, if your logo is chosen, we will need them anyway before we are able to put it to use publicly.

These complementary materials are:

  • A banner for the website. The current one is 986x60px, but the new one could be higher, maybe up to 150px.
  • A splash screen for boot. Must be 640x480px with a black background, 8-bit/RGBA. It has to be distinguishable by the user as Tails, but discrete enough not to attract too much attention from other people around.
  • A color palette for the website, if it needs to be adapted to match the logo.
  • Fonts to be used to create other material matching the logo.
  • A CSS patch for colors and fonts on the website, if you are into CSS.
  • A grayscale version of the logo.

Calendar

  • 31st of March: Deadline for sending proposals to tails-dev@boum.org. No attachments to the email, but link to a public place where we can find your work.
  • 9th of April: The winner is announced.
  • 15th of April: All the complementary materials have to be ready so we have time to include them in Tails 1.0. The designer of the winning logo is strongly encouraged to do this work, before or after the deadline for proposals.
Posted Mon 10 Mar 2014 01:23:45 AM CET Tags:
Call for testing: 0.23~rc1

You can help Tails! The first (and hopefully only) release candidate for the upcoming version 0.23 is out. Please test it and see if all works for you.

How to test Tails 0.23~rc1?

  1. Keep in mind that this is a test image. We have made sure that it is not broken in an obvious way, but it might still contain undiscovered issues.

  2. Download the ISO image and its signature:

    Tails 0.23~rc1 ISO image

    Tails 0.23~rc1 signature

  3. Verify the ISO image.

  4. Have a look at the list of known issues of this release and the list of longstanding known issues.

  5. Test wildly!

If you find anything that is not working as it should, please report to us! Bonus points if you check that it is not a known issue of this release or a longstanding known issue.

How to automatically upgrade from 0.22.1?

These steps allow you to automatically upgrade a device installed with Tails Installer from Tails 0.22.1 to Tails 0.23~rc1 using the Tails Upgrader:

  • Start Tails 0.22.1 and set an administration password.

  • Run this command in a Terminal to select the "alpha" upgrade channel and start the upgrade: 

    echo 'TAILS_CHANNEL="alpha"' | sudo tee --append /etc/os-release && \
tails-upgrade-frontend-wrapper

What's new since 0.22.1?

  • Major improvements

    • Spoof the network interfaces' MAC address by default (Closes: ticket #5421), as specified in our on design document .

    • Rework the way to configure how Tor connects to the network (bridges, proxies, restrictive firewalls): add an option to Tails Greeter, start Tor Launcher when needed (Closes: ticket #5920, ticket #5343).

  • Bugfixes

    • Additional software: do not crash when persistence is disabled (Closes: ticket #6440).

    • Upgrade Pidgin to 2.10.9, that fixes some regressions introduced in the 2.10.8 security update (Closes: ticket #6661).

    • Wait for Tor to have fully bootstrapped, plus a bit more time, before checking for upgrades (Closes: ticket #6728) and unfixed known security issues.

    • Disable the Intel Management Engine Interface driver (Closes: ticket #6460). We don't need it in Tails, it might be dangerous, and it causes bugs on various hardware such as systems that reboot when asked to shut down.

    • Add a launcher for the Tails documentation. This makes it available in Windows Camouflage mode (Closes: ticket #5374, ticket #6767).

    • Remove the obsolete wikileaks.de account from Pidgin (Closes: ticket #6807).

  • Minor improvements

    • Upgrade Tor to 0.2.4.21-1~d60.squeeze+1.

    • Upgrade obfsproxy to 0.2.6-2~~squeeze+1.

    • Upgrade I2P to 0.9.11-1deb6u1.

    • Install 64-bit kernel instead of the 686-pae one (Closes: ticket #5456). This is a necessary first step towards UEFI boot support.

    • Install Monkeysign (in a not-so-functional shape yet).

    • Disable the autologin text consoles (Closes: ticket #5588). This was one of the blockers before a screen saver can be installed in a meaningful way (ticket #5684).

    • Don't localize the text consoles anymore: it is broken on Wheezy, the intended users can as well use loadkeys, and we now do not have to trust setupcon to be safe for being run as root by the desktop user.

    • Make it possible to manually start IBus.

    • Reintroduce the possibility to switch identities in the Tor Browser, using a filtering proxy in front of the Tor ControlPort to avoid giving full control over Tor to the desktop user (Closes: ticket #6383).

    • Incremental upgrades improvements:

      • Drop the Tails Upgrader launcher, to limit users' confusion (Closes: ticket #6513).

      • Lock down sudo credentials a bit.

      • Hide debugging information (Closes: ticket #6505).

      • Include ~/.xsession-errors in WhisperBack bug reports. This captures the Tails Upgrader errors and debugging information.

      • Report more precisely why an incremental upgrade cannot be done (Closes: ticket #6575).

      • Various user interface and phrasing improvements.

    • Don't install the Cookie Monster browser extension (Closes: ticket #6790).

    • Add a browser bookmark pointing to Tor's Stack Exchange (Closes: ticket #6632).

    • Remove the preconfigured #tor channel from Pidgin: apparently, too many Tails users go ask Tails questions there, without making it clear that they are running Tails, hence creating a user-support nightmare (Closes: ticket #6679).

    • Use (most of) Tor Browser's mozconfig (Closes: ticket #6474).

    • Rebase the browser on top of iceweasel 24.3.0esr-1, to get the certificate authorities added by Debian back (Closes: ticket #6704).

    • Give access to the relevant documentation pages from Tails Greeter.

    • Hide Tails Greeter's password mismatch warning when entry is changed.

    • Persistent Volume Assistant:

      • Take into account our installer is now called Tails Installer.

      • Optimize window height (Closes: ticket #5458).

      • Display device paths in a more user-friendly way (Closes: ticket #5311).

  • Build system

    • Ease updating POT and PO files at release time, and importing translations from Transifex (Closes: ticket #6288, ticket #6207).

    • Drop custom poedit backport, install it from squeeze-backports-sloppy.

    • Make ISO and IUK smaller (Closes: ticket #6390, ticket #6425):

      • Exclude more files from being included in the ISO.

      • Remove *.pyc later so that they are not recreated.

      • Truncate log files later so that they are not filled again.

      • At ISO build time, set mtime to the epoch for large files whose content generally does not change between releases. This forces rsync to compare the actual content of these files, when preparing an IUK, instead of blindly adding it to the IUK merely because the mtime has changed, while the content is the same.

      • Make local hooks logging consistent.

  • Test suite

    • Migrate from JRuby to native Ruby + rjb.

    • The test suite can now be run on Debian Wheezy + backports.

    • Fix buggy "persistence is not enabled" step (Closes: ticket #5465).

    • Use IPv6 private address as of RFC 4193 for the test suite's virtual network. Otherwise dnsmasq from Wheezy complains, as it is not capable of handling public IPv6 addresses.

    • Delete volumes after each scenario unless tagged @keep_volumes.

    • Add an anti-test to make sure the memory erasure test works fine.

    • A *lot* of bugfixes, simplifications and robustness improvements.

Known issues in 0.23~rc1

All these issues are being worked on and will hopefully be fixed in Tails 0.23.

Posted Fri 07 Mar 2014 10:18:58 PM CET
Tails testers mailing list

If you are a Tails enthusiast, testing ISO images of upcoming releases and future features is a great way to make Tails stronger. If you like playing with new features, identifying problems, and breaking things, then consider subscribing to the tails-testers mailing list.

This is where we announce and report back on:

  • Release candidates for future releases
  • Feature previews for upcoming improvements
Do not rely on these experimental ISO images for security.
Only use them for testing purposes.

Release candidates

Two weeks before each release, we publish a release candidate. It has the same features as the upcoming release but needs testing to validate that they are working correctly.

The release candidates are also announced in our news and are available online.

What you can test on them:

  • The new features, as described in the Changelog, linked from the announcement.
  • Any other feature of Tails, for example the ones listed in our manual test suite.

Feature previews

Every now and then, we also publish ISO images to test more specifically a new feature we are working on.

They are available on http://nightly.tails.boum.org/ and are announced together with specific testing instructions.

Subscribe

Archives from the list

This list is archived publicly:

https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-testers/

Posted Fri 07 Mar 2014 01:23:45 AM CET Tags:
Report on the 2013 Tails bounty program

Thanks to the Knight Foundation and to the Tor project, we have organized a bounty program to improve software upon which Tails is relying.

The recruiting process was long and not exactly easy, some projects did not reach completion... but four of them were successful!

Removable USB in libvirt

Support for marking emulated USB devices as removable was added libvirt and virt-manager.

This was merged upstream by October 2013.

Symmetric file encryption and signature verification in Seahorse Nautilus

Support for symmetric encryption was added to the user interface which is presented by Seahorse Nautilus on right-click → Encrypt. Additionally, support for checking both detached signatures and text messages with cleartext signatures, as well reporting on their validity, was added to the Nautilus contextual menu.

This involved patching seahorse-nautilus, shared-mime-info, and libcryptui.

Relevant tickets:

The patches were merged upstream by December 2013.

Packaging and improving keyringer

Various improvements to keyringer were delivered, to make it more usable and easier to install:

  • Debian packaging
  • man page
  • Bash and Zsh completion

All the deliverables were approved by December 2013, and keyringer is now available in Debian.

Exporting ikiwiki tickets to Redmine

A custom ikiwiki plugin was written to help importing from the old Tails task tracker to Redmine. This included exporting ticket name, tags, and parent/child relationships in a format suitable for importing into Redmine, and creating rewrite rules to redirect ikiwiki URLs to Redmine.

All the deliverables were approved by August 2013. 887 tickets were imported in our new Redmine project.

Encrypted /me IRC messages in Pidgin OTR

The goal was to make it so /me messages in OTR conversations, when using IRC in Pidgin, are encrypted just like regular messages typed in this context.

The person we contacted to work on this bounty was not able to finish the work in due time. Since then, someone else worked on a patch, that we have successfully tested, and that is now waiting for review in the upstream bug tracker.

Ticket: https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/15750

Support for importing SSH keys with Seahorse

The goal was to allow importing public and private SSH keys with Seahorse.

The person we contacted to work on this bounty was not able to finish the work.

Improve Vidalia

The goals were to make Vidalia better adapted to Tails needs, and to turn some of our patches into options available in the upstream code. More specifically:

  • Adapt Vidalia UI to allow users to avoid connecting to the public Tor network.
  • Support a HideSharing option in vidalia.conf to hide the "Sharing" tab of the Vidalia preferences window
  • Support a HideNewCircuit option in vidalia.conf to hide every control that trigger the "New identity" feature of Vidalia.

Tickets:

The person we contacted to work on this bounty disappeared before signing the contract.

Posted Thu 06 Mar 2014 09:38:46 PM CET
Tails report for February, 2014

Releases

Tails 0.22.1 was released on February 4.

Metrics

  • Tails has been started more than 222 134 times in February. This make 7 933 boots a day in average.
  • 453 082 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO. Weird.
  • 92 reports were received through WhisperBack.

Code

New features:

Software updates:

Bug and regression fixes:

Towards Tails based on Debian Wheezy:

  • I2P packages compatible with Debian Wheezy were prepared, and are now installed in the feature/wheezy branch.
  • Application launchers were added to the GNOME panel.
  • A launcher to start the documentation viewer was added to the applications menu.
  • A more standard icon is used for the shutdown button.

Documentation, website and localization

  • Icons for the different roles on the Contribute section were finalized and deployed live.
  • The ?FAQ was greatly expanded, and is now almost ready for prime-time.
  • We have made good progress on specifying how the Tails logo should look like (ticket #5797).
  • It was documented how to improve Tails by working on Debian. We have received positive feedback from Debian contributors about it.
  • Many small improvements to the documentation and its translations were done, including:
    • quite a few clarifications in the documentation for new contributors;
    • updated system requirements documentation;
    • documented how to change the passphrase for the persistent volume (ticket #5621).
  • Links to the I2P website were updated.
  • Documentation for the new MAC address spoofing feature was drafted.
  • Work is in progress on documentation about contributing to Tails in the infrastructure (systems administration, automation) area.

Infrastructure

  • Our Puppet modules were published. This was a first blocker before we can welcome contributions to our infrastructure.
  • The system that hosts our Redmine was re-installed from scratch on a new machine, upgraded to Debian Wheezy and to Redmine 1.4.4.
  • Some improvements to our automated test suite were merged: test/fix-persistence-checks, test/keep-volumes-tag, and test/5959-antitest-memory-erasure. Thanks to this and the robustness improvements brought by the move to RJB, we were finally able to remove two of the most painful sets of tests from our manual test suite.
  • A mailing-list for early testers was created and is being set up.

On-going discussions

Funding

  • We have discussed with GNOME how they could use the money they have raised for privacy and anonymity improvements.

Outreach

  • We have been working with people who want to build bridges between the graphics designers and usability experts community on the one hand, and Free Software developers on the other hand. Thanks to this collaboration, it is likely that Tails will go through a usability study in a few months, followed by a hackfest that will put at work designers and usability experts for finding solutions to (some of) the identified issues. The Tails sprint in July might host this hackfest.
  • One of us attended FOSDEM, and got a chance to talk with many interesting people in person there.
  • We got in touch with the people behind Freepto, and are looking how our two projects could collaborate more.
  • We are participating in two new Debian teams: the Debian OTR Team and the Debian AppArmor Profiles Team.

Press and testimonials

  • 2014-02-27: In his article "Why It’s Vital For Users to Fund Open-Source Encryption Tools" Trevor Timm from Freedom of the Press Foundation explains that Tails « has been vital for most, if not all, of the NSA journalists. [...] Its prime use case is journalists trying to communicate or work in environments in which they may normally be at risk or compromised. The NSA stories have been the biggest story in journalism in the past decade, yet the tool the reporters rely on is incredibly underfunded, is maintained by only a handful of developers, and operates on a shoestring budget. »
  • 2014-02-07: In his review of uVirtus, Kheops, from Telecomix concludes that « Users should prefer Tails and other mature secure live distributions (such as IprediaOS, Liberté Linux, Privatix and Whonix) over uVirtus since they provide a real safety improvement to the user. For any activity that does not entail transferring large quantities of data (such as video files), there is no strong reason to prefer uVirtus over any of these. »
Posted Wed 05 Mar 2014 11:31:03 PM CET
Today we fight back

"The day we fight back" is a day of protest against mass surveillance. It asks legislators to oppose the FISA Improvements Act, support the USA Freedom Act, and enact protections for non-Americans.

Posted Tue 11 Feb 2014 10:00:00 AM CET
Tails report for January, 2014

Releases

Tails 0.22.1 has been rescheduled to February 4 due to holidays at Mozilla.

Metrics

  • Tails has been started more than 236 579 times in December. This make 7 630 boots a day in average.
  • 16 640 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO.
  • 112 reports were received through WhisperBack.

Code

New features:

Software updates:

Bug and regression fixes:

Documentation and website

  • A new German team was created with Frithjof, Frau Suk, and Jens Kubieziel.
  • Spanish translations were disabled on the website because too few pages were translated.
  • Our program of Easy tasks for new contributors was published.
  • Icons for the different roles on the Contribute section were drafted.

Infrastructure

Test suite

On-going discussions

Funding

  • We sent our application to sponsor Lima. - We are still in the process of signing a contract with sponsor Echo. - We published our income statement for 2013.

Outreach

  • We are organizing the 2014 Tails developers summit.
  • A 3-days public Tails sprint will probably take place in Paris in July. Many thanks to Stefano Zacchiroli for his help!

Press and testimonials

  • 2014-01-14: On Linux.com, Carla Schroder picks Tails as the best Linux distribution for 2014 in the "Best Fighting the Man Distro" category.
  • 2014-01-07: A RAT in the Registry: The Case for Martus on TAILS explains how Benetech have selected Tails to be the default environment for their use of Martus while defending Tibetan human rights defenders against targeted malware attacks.
  • 2014-01: "Tails: The Amnesiac Incognito Live System – Privacy for Anyone Anywhere", by Russ McRee, in this month's issue of the Information Systems Security Association Journal.
Posted Mon 10 Feb 2014 05:17:25 PM CET
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