Releases

  • Tails 1.1~beta1 was released on May 30.
  • Tails 1.0.1 was released on June 10.
  • Tails 1.1 was released on July 22. This marked our migration to Debian Wheezy and GNOME 3.

Metrics

In June 2014:

  • Tails has been started more than 331 862 times in June. This makes 11 062 boots a day in average.
  • 25 124 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO from our website.
  • 71 bug reports were received through WhisperBack.

In July 2014:

  • Tails has been started more than 355 608 times in July. This makes 11 471 boots a day in average.
  • 35 134 downloads of the OpenPGP signature of Tails ISO from our website.
  • 160 bug reports were received through WhisperBack. We discovered in late July than one of our WhisperBack relay was not sending emails anymore since our fixes of the Heartbleed bug. This explains the bump in the number of bug reports.

Code

  • Fixed device removal before Tails Greeter login (#7333).
  • Disabled the GnuPG functionality of GNOME Keyring (#7330).
  • Removed dselect (#7336).
  • Updated Tor browser to 24.6.0.
  • Installed Linux 3.14.
  • Fixed links to anchors in Yelp (#7285).
  • Included syslinux binaries in the ISO filesystem (ce93164)
  • Prevented iproute2 from being installed (#7337).
  • Changed local documentation to open in Yelp (f8513c1).
  • Set the UID of tails-persistence-setup to the same as it was in Squeeze (#7343).
  • Forbidden the desktop user to pass arguments to tails-upgrade-frontend (#7410).
  • Fixed many things to have a Windows 8 camouflage ready for Tails 1.1 (#6342).
  • Fixed the migration of NetworkManager persistent settings (#7338).
  • Worked with the people from Freepto on pushing our tool for RAM wiping to Debian, and we made some progress towards using the wiperam Debian package in Tails.
  • Shipped Windows binaries of syslinux in Tails (#7425).
  • Fixed the red theme of the Unsafe Browser (#7473).
  • Tightened up the permissions on /home/amnesia (#7463).
  • Fixed unsafe permissions on persistent files (#7443).
  • Prepared a solution to be able to "Upgrade from ISO" 1.0.1 to 1.1 (#7345).
  • Disabled the proxy:// protocol handle of FoxyProxy (#7479).
  • Installed Tor 0.2.5.x on a topic branch (9f18b50, #7758).
  • Removed the default bookmarks were removed from the Unsafe Browser (#7594).
  • Fixed a bug that broke incremental upgrades for Tails > 1.1 (#7641).
  • Fixed our security check notification that were broken for months (#7657).
  • Migrated our Vagrant basebox to Wheezy (#7133, #6736).
  • Started to work on Tails Jessie. It is now possible to build Tails based on Jessie!
  • Jacob Appelbaum simplified our IPv6 firewall rules (#7668).
  • Disabled TCP timestamps (#6579).
  • Installed Linux 3.14-2.
  • Prevented dhclient from sending the amnesia hostname over the network (#7688).
  • Worked a bit towards towards supporting USB devices exposed as non-removable (0a255dc, #7387).
  • Installed gnome-user-guide to fix the Help launcher in the menus (#7618).
  • Fixed the configuration of printers from the GNOME control center (#7636).
  • Worked on installing rngd (#5650).
  • Compressed our ISO images more aggressively. They should be back to less than 1 GB (#7706).
  • Started drafting a list of kernel modules to blacklist.

Documentation and website

Homepage defacement

The homepage of our website was briefly defaced on June 29 by rodit. This was later was Git-reverted, ikiwiki misconfiguration was corrected. The underlying vulnerability has not been used for malicious purposes.

Translation and internationalization

A new team started to translate our website into Spanish.

All website PO files

  • de: 11% (613) strings translated, +36 since May
  • fr: 48% (2576) strings translated, +19 since May
  • pt: 36% (1953) strings translated, +704 since May

Core PO files

  • de: 26% (338) strings translated, +31 since May
  • fr: 95% (1207) strings translated, -5 since May
  • pt: 99% (1257) strings translated, +488 since May

Infrastructure

  • Our test suite covers 87 scenarios, 3 more that in May.
  • We now use OpenJDK7 to run our test suite (#7175).
  • We've adapted our infrastructure to the last version of the shared postfix Puppet module.
  • Our infrastructure was cleaned up from Squeeze-area bits (#7215).
  • lizard's outgoing email setup was fixed (#7485).
  • Pushing to our master Git repository now automatically pushed to the repository that triggers Jenkins builds (#5558).

On-going discussions

  • Tahoe-LAFS persistence
  • The future of Vagrant Tails builds
  • vpwned
  • How the traffic confirmation attack on Tor affects Tails

Funding

  • Sent our final report for the OpenITP grant from fall 2013.
  • The FPF crowdfunding extended their crowdfunding campaign.
  • Signed the agreement with Access for their Innovation Prize we've won.
  • Started working on two new grant applications to be submitted in August.
  • Worked on a web form for donations in fiat currencies (#7156).

Outreach

We organized a very successful HackFest attended by more than hundred people. This event was followed by our yearly summit, attended by 15 people.

Among the concrete work done during those ten days, here is was can be found in our blueprints:

  • Made plans to fix in the long-term our mirror infrastructure.
  • Had ideas to better track our delta with Debian.
  • Improved and published the future user interface of Tails Greeter.
  • Drafted plans to fix our Vagrant basebox, and considered Docker for replacement.
  • Designed a Firefox extension to download and automatically verify a Tails ISO image.
  • Drafted a design document about random numbers in Tails.
  • Decided on a roadmap for our UX work.
  • Brainstormed on a future structure for our website and homepage.

Press & Testimonials