Tails (operating system)

Tails was first released on June 23, 2009. It is the next iteration of development on Incognito, a discontinued Gentoo-based Linux distribution.^[10] The original project was called Amnesia. The operating system was born when Amnesia was merged with Incognito.^[11] The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project.^[9] Tails also received funding from the Open Technology Fund, Mozilla, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.^[12]

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.^{[11][13][14][15]}

From release 3.0 (2017) onwards, Tails requires a 64-bit processor to run.^[16]

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."^[17][18]

Tails must be installed on a USB stick dedicated to running Tails only, for security,^[19] and must be run on a PC-compatible computer, not a mobile phone or tablet computer.^[20]

Tails's pre-installed desktop environment is GNOME. 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.^[21][22] Despite being open-source, Tails contains non-free firmware blobs.^[23] 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,^[24] instant messaging, email, file transmission and monitoring local network connections for security.^[22]

By design, Tails is "amnesic". 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", which is encrypted by default, but is not hidden and easily detectable, though not readable, by forensic analysis.^[25] While shutting down, Tails overwrites most of the used RAM to avoid a cold boot attack.^[26]

Tails is based on Linux. Linux generally supports a wide range of hardware, including many older devices, due to standardized drivers. There may be problems with some hardware for which Linux drivers are not available, or not supported by Tails. Wi-Fi hardware, in particular, can be incompatible without a workaround, requiring a cable for Internet connection. Touchpads and graphics can cause problems which can be worked around.^[27][28][29]

Using an AMD GPU with fully open-source official AMD gpu driver support should in theory and technically give the users a better experience and possibly better security when compared to Nvidia, whose Linux drivers, which are not good, are not included in Tails as they are proprietary and closed source. nouveau unofficial open source Linux drivers for Nvidia are available, but have stability issues.^[30]

In 2014, Das Erste reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA)'s XKeyscore 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 mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums".^[31][32]

In the same year, Der Spiegel published slides from an internal NSA 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".^[33][34]

In 2017, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used malicious code developed by Facebook, identifying sexual extortionist and Tails user Buster Hernandez through a zero-day vulnerability in the system's default video player, GNOME Videos. 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. Hernandez had eluded authorities for a long time; the FBI and Facebook had searched for him with no success, and resorted to developing the custom hacking tool. He was arrested in 2017, and in 2021 he was sentenced to 75 years in prison.^[35]