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Tails OS hits version 3.0, matches Debian's pace but bins 32-bit systems

Edward Snowden's preferred-for-privacy OS gets a decent upgrade

The developers of privacy-protecting Linux distribution Tails have decided to get closer to Debian with the project's 3.0 release.

Tails - aka The Amnesic Incognito Live System - is designed to boot and run from removable storage and not to leave any trace of what you did while running it.

Users booting into version 3.0 will first see a more polished UI based on the GNOME default black theme. Next, Tails' developers hope, they'll notice fixes to the startup (quicker and easier to configure) and shutdown routine (to kill some persistent crashes).

At shutdown, Tails 3.0 also uses the Linux freed memory poisoning to overwrite system RAM, so an attacker or spook can't get at user data.

As first advised in January, old processors are farewelled, for security reasons, 32 bit machines are no longer supported. This lets the developers make NX bit support compulsory (this marks memory as non-executable, making it harder to exploit attacks like buffer overruns).

Getting rid of 32 bit support also lets Tails take advantage of address space layout randomisation (ASLR).

Tails 3.0 includes the Firefox 52 ESR-based Tor Browser 7.0, and the latest versions of other key bundled packages like KeePassX, LibreOffice, Inkscape, Audacity, Enigmail, MAT, Dasher and Git.

Other changes are listed at the changelog, and Tails 3.0 is available for download here. ®

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