Tails 4.17 Anonymous OS Released with Automatic File System Repair During Boot

Tails 4.17

Tails, the amnesic incognito live system a.k.a. anonymous OS, has been updated today to version 4.17, a release that ships with the latest Tor technologies and various new features.

Tails 4.17 is here with some great improvements, including automatic repair of the file system used for upgrades during boot by cleaning up old automatic upgrade files that were left on the drive after a manual system upgrade, which blocked automatic upgrades from functioning properly.

Also, Tails now automatically resumes the download whenever an upgrade fails and the Tails Upgrader utility is now more resilient to broken mirrors.

As with all new Tails releases, Tails 4.17 ships with the latest and greatest Tor technologies used to enable anonymous communication inside the system. Included in this release are the Tor Browser 10.0.14 anonymous web browser and Tor 0.4.5.7 anonymous client/server implementation.

Also included in this release are the Mozilla Thunderbird 78.8.0 email client and GRUB 2.04-16 bootloader, which is imported from the Debian GNU/Linux 10 “Buster” repositories and patched against the 2021 BootHole UEFI SecureBoot vulnerability.

According to the release notes, some non-free firmware packages have been updated as well to improve the support for various Wi-Fi interfaces, especially Intel, Broadcom, and Cypress ones. Furthermore, Tails 4.17 improves the error message when starting the Unsafe Browser offline.

If you want to stay invisible online at all times, you should use Tails, which is even used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Tails 4.17 can be downloaded from the official website as an ISO or USB image that you can write on a USB flash drive to use the system live without installing anything on your personal computer.

Of course, if you’re already using Tails on your PC, you can easily upgrade your installation to version 4.17 using the Tails Upgrader utility. Automatic upgrades are currently supported from Tails 4.14 and later.

Last updated 3 years ago

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