Important security fixes

The vulnerabilities described below were identified during an external security audit by Radically Open Security and disclosed responsibly to our team. We are not aware of these attacks being used against Tails users until now.

These vulnerabilities can only be exploited by a powerful attacker who has already exploited another vulnerability to take control of an application in Tails.

  • Prevent an attacker from monitoring Tor circuits. (#20733 and #20744)

    In Tails 6.11 or earlier, an attacker who has already taken control of an application in Tails could then exploit vulnerabilities in Onion Circuits and our Tor Browser wrapper that might lead to deanonymization.

  • Prevent an attacker from changing the Persistent Storage settings. (#20745)

Changes and updates

  • Add a button to check for upgrades from the About Tails utility.

  • Add the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T to open a Terminal.

  • Update Tor Browser to 14.0.5.

  • Update Thunderbird to 128.6.0esr.

Fixed problems

  • Ensure all our Python code keeps running in isolated mode. (#20719)

  • Simplify the troubleshooting instructions when an automatic upgrade fails. (#20466)

  • Avoid freezing the Welcome Screen while activating the Persistent Storage. (#20635)

  • Made time synchronization more reliable when restarting Tor. (#20530)

  • Display an error message when upgrading the encryption of the Persistent Storage to LUKS2 fails. (#20634)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

  • When installing additional software from your Persistent Storage fails, the Configure and Show Log buttons in the notification don't work.

    Notification: The installation of your additional software failed

    • To configure your additional software, choose Applications ▸ Persistent Storage and click on the button of the Additional Software feature.

    • To show the log, execute the following command in a Terminal.

      cat /run/live-additional-software/log

Get Tails 6.12

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your Persistent Storage

  • Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 6.0 or later to 6.12.

  • If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails 6.12 on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 6.12 directly: