Releases

Tails 0.22 was released on December 11.

Tails 0.22.1 is scheduled for January 21. The schedule for the next releases is on our calendar.

Metrics

  • Tails has been started more than 218 512 times in December. This make 7 049 boots a day in average.
  • 17 791 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO.
  • 103 reports were received through WhisperBack.

Code

New features:

  • Huge progress was made on the MAC spoofing feature, that can now be tested (#5421).
  • Experimental UEFI support was completed and is been tested. A bit more work is needed, though.
  • The last mile was basically completed regarding incremental upgrades, that will be enabled by default starting with Tails 0.22.1 (#6014).

Work in progress:

  • David Wolinsky has started porting the WiNoN design to Tails: multiple, independent VMs connected to independent paths through the Tor network in order to wear multiple hats. Also, as David put it: "There are other benefits of using VMs as the Whonix folks have recognized" (#5748).
  • We have struggled against a memory wipe regression on some hardware with recent Linux kernels. No success so far.
  • Some progress was made towards the migration to Wheezy (Tails 1.1).
  • Early support for Monkeysign was merged (#6455), but more work is needed.

Bug and regression fixes:

  • Disable WebRTC (#6468).
  • Fix keyboard shortcuts (#6478).
  • Use the same User-Agent in htpdate as in the Tor Browser (#6477).
  • Fix the Unsafe Browser configuration (#6479).
  • Set the browser icon to IE's one in Windows camouflage mode.

Branches pending review:

  • Install a 64-bit kernel.
  • Install poedit from official backports was proposed (#6456).
  • Do not create auto-login text consoles (#5588).

And also:

  • Tor 0.2.4 is now stable!
  • The Persistent Volume Assistant now displays nicer paths. Thanks to Andres Gomez!
  • Torbutton was upgraded to 1.6.5.3 (#6566).
  • Our Tor Browser build and runtime dependencies were updated.
  • We have fixed various NSS security issues in squeeze-backports (#6497).

Documentation and website

  • A branch to clean up our ikiwiki configuration was started.
  • The Mac installation instructions were made a bit safer.
  • The links to files and branches in cgit were fixed.
  • The tails-support mailing list is now mentioned on Help other Tails users.
  • The documentation for incremental upgrades was written.
  • The documentation for MAC spoofing was drafted.
  • The draft FAQ has now more content.

Infrastructure

Test suite

  • The Tails automated test suite can now be run on pure Debian Wheezy with backports (#6399). This allowed us to update the test suite to match current code, fix many bugs in it, and improve style a bit. Most of this was merged, but a few more branches are pending review: #5959, #5465, and #6544.
  • Our automated test suite was partially ported to the feature/wheezy branch.

Build system

  • Thanks to David Wolinsky and others, our Vagrant setup was updated to work with newer Vagrant (#6221), and the corresponding basebox updated to include up-to-date Debian archive keys. While we were at it, a few lurking bugs were fixed.
  • Thanks to WinterFairy, it is now easy to import translations from Transifex into our various Git repositories.

On-going discussions

  • Tor Browser branding in Tails?
  • Risks of enabled/disabled TCP timestamps? (#6579)

Funding

  • The Freedom of the Press Foundation launched a campaign to support encryption tools for journalists. Tails is among the projects this campaign gathers fund for.
  • The proposal we have sent to sponsor Echo was accepted.
  • Our grant proposal with sponsor Charlie was rejected.
  • We are slowly making progress on our grant proposal with sponsor Golf.
  • We have almost completed a proposal to be sent to sponsor Lima.
  • Our contract with sponsor Bravo is now finished.
  • Tails will soon accept donations in currencies other than Bitcoin.
  • We are now very likely to create a nonprofit organization dedicated to Tails.
  • We have almost wrapped-up our bounties program. A report will be published soonish.

Outreach

Tails participated in the 30th Chaos Communication Congress. It was a great opportunity to meet, in person, a few existing and new contributors, as well as many people we are working with.

A self-organized event called Tails needs your help was organized. It was a success considering the late notice.

See you next year, probably with more space and events dedicated to Tails!

Press and testimonials

  • 2013-12: Bruce Schneier answered to someone asking him what Linux distribution is its favorite: "I don't use Linux. (Shhh. Don't tell anyone.) Although I have started using Tails".
  • 2013-12-12: In A conversation with Bruce Schneier, as part of the "Snowden, the NSA and free software" cycle at Columbia Law School NYC, Bruce Schneier says:
    • "I think most of the public domain privacy tools are going to be safe, yes. I think GPG is going to be safe. I think OTR is going to be safe. I think that Tails is going to be safe. I do think that these systems, because they were not -- you know, the NSA has a big lever when a tool is written closed-source by a for-profit corporation. There are levers they have that they don't have in the open source international, altruistic community. And these are generally written by crypto-paranoids, they're pretty well designed. We make mistakes, but we find them and we correct them, and we're getting good at that. I think that if the NSA is going after these tools, they're going after implementations."
    • "What do I trust? I trust, I trust Tails, I trust GPG [...]"
    • "We can make it harder, we can make it more expensive, we can make it more risky. And yes, every time we do something to increase one of those, we're making ourselves safer. [...] There are tools we are deploying in countries all over the world, that are keeping people alive. Tor is one of them. I mean, Tor saves lives. [...] And every time you use Tor [...] provides cover for everyone else who uses Tor [...]"
  • Jacob Appelbaum stated at the Chaos Communication Congress: "if you are a journalist and you are not using Tails, you should probably be using Tails, unless you really know what you're doing".