Tails (operating system)

Tails, or "The Amnesic Incognito Live System", is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity against surveillance. It connects to the Internet exclusively through the anonymity network Tor. The system is designed to be booted as a live DVD or live USB and never writes to the hard drive or SSD, leaving no digital footprint on the machine unless explicitly told to do so. It can also be run as a virtual machine, with some additional security risks.

The Tor Project provided financial support for Tails' 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, a discontinued Gentoo-based Linux distribution. The original project was called Amnesia. The operating system was born when Amnesia was merged with Incognito. The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project. Tails also received funding from the Open Technology Fund, Mozilla, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Schneier and Barton Gellman have each said that Tails was an important tool they used in their work with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

From release 3.0, in 2017, Tails requires a 64-bit processor to run.

In 2023, the Tails Project approached the Tor Project to merge operations. The merger was completed on September 26, 2024, stating that, "By joining forces, the Tails team can now focus on their core mission of maintaining and improving Tails OS, exploring more and complementary use cases while benefiting from the larger organizational structure of The Tor Project."

Features

Tails's pre-installed is GNOME 3. 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. Despite being open-source, Tails contains non-free firmware blobs.

Tails includes a unique variety of software that handles the encryption of files and internet transmissions, cryptographic signing and hashing, Electrum Bitcoin Wallet, Aircrack-ng and other functions important to security. It is pre-configured to use Tor 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 with the inclusion of uBlock Origin, instant messaging, email, file transmission and monitoring local network connections for security.

By design, Tails is "amnestic". It runs in the computer's random access memory (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 easily detectable by forensic analysis. While shutting down, Tails overwrites most of the used RAM to avoid a cold boot attack.

Hardware Support

Tails is based on Linux. Linux generally supports a wide range of hardware, including many older devices, due to standardized drivers. Yet, users may still face problems trying to use certain hardware with the system due to non-standardization or other issues (such as with graphics, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth or decreased security).

Using an AMD GPU with fully open source official amdgpu driver support should in theory and technically give the users a better experience and possibly better security when compared to Nvidia whose Linux drivers are known to be subpar from the get-go and are in fact not included in Tails for being proprietary