Tails, or The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a security-focused

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

-based

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

aimed at preserving

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

and

anonymity Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea he ...

. It connects to the Internet exclusively through the anonymity network

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

. The system is designed to be booted as a

live DVD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading fro ...

live USB A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, thou ...

, and leaves no

digital footprint Digital footprint or digital shadow refers to one's unique set of traceable digital activities, actions, contributions and communications manifested on the Internet or digital devices. Digital footprints can be classified as either passive or ...

on the machine unless explicitly told to do so. It can also be run as a

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

, with some additional security risks. The

Tor Project Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project, and continues to do so alongside numerous corporate and anonymous sponsors.

History

Tails was first released on June 23, 2009. It is the next iteration of development on

Incognito Incognito is an English adjective meaning "in disguise", "having taken steps to conceal one's identity". Incognito may also refer to: Film and television * ''Incognito'' (1937 film), a Danish film * ''Incognito'' (1997 film), an American crime ...

, a discontinued Gentoo-based Linux distribution. The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project. Tails also received funding from the

Open Technology Fund The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is an American nonprofit corporation that aims to support global Internet freedom technologies. Its mission is to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and ...

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...

, and the

Freedom of the Press Foundation Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a non-profit organization founded in 2012 to fund and support free speech and freedom of the press. The organization originally managed crowd-funding campaigns for independent journalistic organizations, ...

Laura Poitras Laura Poitras (; born February 2, 1964) is an American director and producer of documentary films. Poitras has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ''Citizenfour'', about Edwa ...

Glenn Greenwald Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded ''The Intercept'', of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on Substac ...

, and

Barton Gellman Barton David Gellman (born 1960) is an American author and journalist known for his reports on September 11 attacks, on Dick Cheney's vice presidency and on the global surveillance disclosure. Beginning in June 2013, he authored ''The Washington P ...

have each said that Tails was an important tool they used in their work with

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

whistleblower

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

. From release 3.0, Tails requires a 64-bit processor to run.

Features

Tails's pre-installed desktop environment is

GNOME 3 GNOME 3 is the third major release of the GNOME desktop environment. A major departure from technologies implemented by its predecessors, GNOME 3 introduced a dramatically different user interface. It was the first GNOME release to utilize a unif ...

. The system includes essential software for functions such as reading and editing documents, image editing, video watching and printing. Other software from Debian can be installed at the user's behest. Tails includes a unique variety of software that handles the encryption of files and internet transmissions, cryptographic signing and

hashing Hash, hashes, hash mark, or hashing may refer to: Substances * Hash (food), a coarse mixture of ingredients * Hash, a nickname for hashish, a cannabis product Hash mark *Hash mark (sports), a marking on hockey rinks and gridiron football field ...

, and other functions important to security. It is pre-configured to use

with multiple connection options. It tries to force all connections to use Tor and blocks connection attempts outside Tor. For networking, it features a modified version of

Tor Browser Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

with the inclusion of

uBlock Origin uBlock Origin (; "" ) is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Pale Moon, as well as versions of Safari prior to 13. uBlock ...

, instant messaging, email, file transmission and monitoring local network connections for security. By design, Tails is "amnesic". It runs in the computer's

Random Access Memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to b ...

(RAM) and does not write to a hard drive or other storage medium. The user may choose to keep files, applications or some settings on their Tails drive in "Persistent Storage". Though the Persistent Storage is encrypted by default, it is not hidden and detectable by forensic analysis. While shutting down, Tails overwrites most of the used RAM to avoid a

cold boot attack In computer security, a cold boot attack (or to a lesser extent, a platform reset attack) is a type of side channel attack in which an attacker with physical access to a computer performs a memory dump of a computer's random-access memory (RAM) by ...

Security incidents

In 2014

Das Erste Das Erste (; "The First") is the flagship national television channel of the ARD association of public broadcasting corporations in Germany. ''Das Erste'' is jointly operated by the nine regional public broadcasting corporations that are member ...

reported that the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

XKeyscore XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data, which it collects in real time. The NSA has shared XKeyscore with other intellige ...

surveillance system sets threat definitions for people who search for Tails using a search engine or visit the Tails website. A comment in XKeyscore's source code calls Tails "a comsec /nowiki>communications security">communications_security.html" ;"title="/nowiki>communications security">/nowiki>communications security/nowiki> mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums". In the same year, ''Der Spiegel'' published slides from an internal

presentation dating to June 2012, in which the NSA deemed Tails on its own as a "major threat" to its mission and in conjunction with other privacy tools as "catastrophic". In 2017, the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

used malicious code developed by

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

, identifying sexual extortionist and Tails user

Buster Hernandez Buster Hernandez (born 1987 or 1988) is a sexual extortionist, child pornography producer and cyberterrorist from Bakersfield, California. He used the internet extensively to target hundreds of underage girls under the pseudonyms Brian Kil and Pur ...

through a

zero-day vulnerability A zero-day (also known as a 0-day) is a computer-software vulnerability previously unknown to those who should be interested in its mitigation, like the vendor of the target software. Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it t ...

in the default video player. The exploit was never explained to or discovered by the Tails developers, but it is believed that the vulnerability was patched in a later release of Tails. It was not easy to find Hernandez: for a long time, the FBI and Facebook had searched for him with no success, resorting to developing the custom hacking tool.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Amnesic Incognito 2009 software Anonymity networks Debian-based distributions Free security software I2P Linux distributions Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media Privacy software Tor (anonymity network)

History

Features

Security incidents

See also

References

External links