Anonymizing Linux: Tails 6.3 corrects security problems

The maintainers of the open-source Linux system Tails have released version 6.3. Some improvements concern the security of the components, and core components have also been brought up to date.

Tails is an anonymizing Linux that can be easily installed on a USB stick. This allows computers to be booted directly into a secure environment. In addition, Tails has a strong focus on privacy and therefore has all the essentials on board for easy use of the anonymizing Tor network.

Security improvements in Tails

The Tor browser is now integrated in version 13.0.15, which brings the underlying Firefox ESR browser up to the current version 115.11. Among other things, this closes a security gap in the processing of PDF files. In the integrated Thunderbird mail client, however, the developers are only deactivating the internal PDF reader in order to close this security gap - it remains unclear why they are not also updating the program to version 115.11. PDF files can still be displayed from Thunderbird using the Document Viewer, the project explains in the release announcement for Tails 6.3.

Other changes are more of a cosmetic nature. At the end of an automatic upgrade, the "Restart later" button is preselected by default instead of "Restart now". When configuring new printers, there could be problems if some were already set up in the persistent storage of Tails 5.23 or earlier. There could also be a long delay between the welcome screen and the start of the Gnome desktop if MAC address anonymization failed.

As usual, the Tails project provides the current installation images for USB sticks and in another version as an ISO image for burning to DVD or for testing in a VM.

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Anonymisierendes Linux: Tails 6.2 legt Schwerpunkt auf Übersetzungen

The maintainers released Tails 6.2 towards the end of April. The main focus of the release was on the translations - 21 new languages were added.

(dmk)