Tails 4.0 Anonymous Linux Operating System Out

Tails 4.0 Anonymous Linux OS Released

Tails is a live system that aims to preserve your privacy and anonymity. It helps you to use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship almost anywhere you go and on any computer but leaving no trace unless you ask it to explicitly.

It is a complete operating system designed to be used from a USB stick or a DVD independently of the computer’s original operating system. It is Free Software and based on Debian GNU/Linux.

Tails comes with several built-in applications pre-configured with security in mind: web browser, instant messaging client, email client, office suite, image and sound editor, etc.

Tails brings new 4.0 version of most of the software included in Tails and some important usability and performance improvements. Tails 4.0 introduces more changes than any other version since years.

Changes and Upgrade

• Replace KeePassX with KeePassXC, which is more actively developed.
• Update Tor Browser to 9.0:
• Update MAT from 0.6.1 to 0.8.0
• Update Electrum from 3.2.3 to 3.3.8. Electrum works again in Tails.
• Update Enigmail to 2.0.12 and gnupg to 2.2.12, which mitigate OpenPGP certificate flooding.

MAT has no graphical interface of its own anymore.

1. To clean the metadata of a file:
2. Open the Files browser and navigate to the file that you want to clean.
3. Right-click (on Mac, click with two fingers) on the file.
4. Choose Remove metadata.

Remove Scribus

You can install Scribus again using the Additional Software feature.

Usability improvements to Tails Greeter

The new version has improved various aspects of the usability of Tails Greeter, especially for non-English users:

To make it easier to select a language, we curated the list of proposed languages by removing the ones that had too little translations to be useful. We also clarified how Chinese is listed by having different entries for simplified and traditional Chinese.

• It simplified the list of keyboard layouts.
• It fixed the Formats setting, which was not being applied.
• It prevented additional settings to be applied when clicking on Cancel or Back.
• It fixed the opening of help pages in other languages than English, when available.

Performance and usability improvements

• Tails 4.0 starts 20 percent faster.
• Tails 4.0 requires about 250 MB less of RAM.
• Tails 4.0 is 47 MB smaller to download than Tails 3.16, despite all these changes.
• Add support for Thunderbolt devices.
• The screen keyboard is easier to use.

Major changes

– Update Tor Browser to 9.0a7, based on Firefox ESR 68 (#16356).
– Include a working version of Electrum: 3.3.8-0.1 (Closes: #16421).

Accordingly:
· Remove the obsolete “coin_chooser: Privacy” option (Closes: #15483).
· Disable the update check (Closes: #15483).
– Curate the list of languages in Tails Greeter (Closes: #16095).
Only include languages which meet one of these conditions:
· Have a PO file in tails.git (i.e. have at least one translated and reviewed string)
· Are on our list of tier-1 supported languages.
– Update Linux to 5.3.2-1~exp1 from Debian experimental (Closes: #17117).
– Bump APT snapshots of the ‘debian’ and ‘torproject’ archives to 2019100904. This includes the update to the Buster 10.1
point-release.

Security fixes

• Drop NoScript customization that makes our web fingerprint diverge
  from Tor Browser’s (related to #5362).
• Enable Buster security APT sources (Closes: #17119).
• Upgrade CUPS to 2.2.10-6+deb10u1 (CVE-2019-8696, CVE-2019-8675,
  and more security fixes).
• Update GnuPG to 2.2.12-1+deb10u1, which mitigates the certificates
  flooding attack.
• Update e2fsprogs to 1.44.5-1+deb10u2 (DSA-4535-1).
• Update ghostscript to 9.27~dfsg-2+deb10u2 (DSA-4518-1, DSA-4499-1).
• Update WebKitGTK to 2.24.4-1~deb10u1 (DSA-4515-1).
• Update Pango to 1.42.4-7~deb10u1 (DSA-4496-1).
• Update ffmpeg to 7:4.1.4-1~deb10u1 (DSA-4502-1).
• Update expat to 2.2.6-2+deb10u1 (DSA-4530-1).
• Update GLib to 2.58.3-2+deb10u1 (CVE-2019-13012).
• Update libmariadb3 to 1:10.3.17-0+deb10u1 (various vulnerabilities).
• Update NSS to 2:3.42.1-1+deb10u1 (CVE-2019-11719, CVE-2019-11727,
  CVE-2019-11729).
• Update LibreOffice to 1:6.1.5-3+deb10u4 (DSA-4519-1, DSA-4501-1,
  DSA-4483-1, and CVE-2019-9848).
• Update Samba to 2:4.9.5+dfsg-5+deb10u1 (DSA-4513-1).
• Update OpenSSL to 1.1.1d-0+deb10u1 (DSA-4539-1).
• Update libxslt to 1.1.32-2.1~deb10u1 (CVE-2019-11068, CVE-2019-13117,
  CVE-2019-13118).
• Update zeromq3 to 4.3.1-4+deb10u1 (DSA-4477-1).
• Update patch to 2.7.6-3+deb10u1 (DSA-4489-1).
• Update Thunderbird to 1:60.9.0-1~deb10u1 (DSA-4523-1, DSA-4482-1).
• Update wpasupplicant to 2:2.7+git20190128+0c1e29f-6+deb10u1 (DSA-4538-1).