ISO writing program: Tails warns against balenaEtcher

To transfer drive images in ISO or IMG format to an SD card or USB stick, you can use the dd command in the terminal of Unix-like operating systems, for example. Or you can choose the convenient way via programs with a simple user interface, which do this with just a few mouse clicks. balenaEtcher is such a program, popular and often used – but now the Tails project, which is developing an anonymizing Linux distribution, is warning against the use of this software.

A news article on the Tails project website explains the reasons for this decision. Since 2019, Tails has recommended balenaEtcher to install Tails from macOS and Windows onto a USB stick. The decisive factor was the simplicity with which the program can be used, and it also supported Macs. Shortly afterward, balenaEtcher started displaying ads. The Tails developers didn't like this, but initially didn't see it as a major privacy problem – and simply didn't have a better alternative at hand.

balenaEtcher: The situation changed in 2024

“In 2024, however, the situation changed: balenaEtcher began to share the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties,” write the Tails maintainers. “While we have not yet experienced or heard of any attacks on Tails users as a result of this change. But we believe that it presents a potential for abuse. To eliminate this risk entirely, we have again looked for alternatives.”

Seven ISO image tools were considered, with Rufus coming out on top in the end. The team had already tested the tool years ago, but found it much more difficult to use. It also changed the Tails image in an unspecified way, which the Tails maintainers classified as “risky”. However, the company behind Rufus, Akeo Consulting, has since “really improved the usability and reliability” of the tool. In the instructions for macOS, Tails has not yet replaced balenaEtcher: on the one hand, rufus does not run under it, on the other hand, Tails does not run on Apple Silicon – People who install Tails from macOS also represent less than ten percent of all installations today. For macOS, however, they recommend using dd on the command line or the Raspberry Pi Imager.

The Raspberry Pi Imager runs under Linux, macOS and Windows and can therefore be considered an all-purpose weapon for writing drive images to SD cards or USB sticks. With Rufus, however, there are also slight reservations on our side. Under Windows, the widely used Win32 Disk Imager often performs well. However, there are cases in which it does not work – In one case, a remedy in the form of an update only came three years after the error message was received by the project.

(dmk)