The Amnesic Incognito Live System
Tails, or The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity.[4] All its incoming and outgoing connections are forced to go through Tor,[5] and any non-anonymous connections are blocked. The system is designed to be booted as a live DVD or live USB, and will leave no digital footprint on the machine unless explicitly told to do so. The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project.[6] Tails comes with UEFI Secure Boot.
History:
Tails was first released on 23 June 2009. It is the next iteration of development on Incognito, a discontinued Gentoo-based Linux distribution.[7] The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project.[6] Tails also received funding from the Open Technology Fund, Mozilla, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.[8]
Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman have each said that Tails was an important tool they used in their work with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.[9][10][11]
From release 3.0, Tails requires a 64-bit processor to run.[12]
Bundled software:
- GNOME desktop
Networking
- Tor (anonymity network) with Stream isolation, regular, obfs3 and obfs4 bridges support.[13]
- NetworkManager for easy network configuration
- Tor Browser, a web browser based on Mozilla Firefox and modified to protect anonymity with:
- Torbutton for anonymity and protection against JavaScript with all cookies treated as session cookies by default;
- HTTPS Everywhere transparently enables SSL-encrypted connections to a great number of major websites
- NoScript to have even more control over JavaScript
- uBlock Origin to remove advertisements.
Note: Due to the fact that Tails includes uBlock Origin (compared to the normal Tor Browser Bundle), it could be subject to an attack to determine if the user is using Tails (since the userbase for Tails is less than the Tor Browser Bundle) by checking if the website is blocking advertising.[14] Although this can be avoided by disabling uBlock Origin.
- Pidgin preconfigured with OTR for end-to-end encrypted instant messaging
- OnionShare for anonymous File sharing
- Thunderbird email client with Enigmail for OpenPGP support
- Liferea feed aggregator
- Aircrack-ng for Wi-Fi networks auditing
- Electrum, an easy-to-use bitcoin client
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