Software Update: Tails 5.1

Tails stands for The amnesic incognito live system and is a live Linux distribution that focuses on privacy and anonymity. It uses Debian GNU/Linux as its base and adds a Gnome environment with Tor, Tor Browser, Pidgin, Thunderbird, Electrum, LibreOffice, GPG and KeePassXC. For more information, please refer to this page† The development team has released version 5.1, which is based on Debian 11 and which, among other things, has replaced OpenPGP with Kleopatra. The complete changelog for this release looks like this:

Tails 5.1 is out
This release fixes the security vulnerability in the JavaScript engine of Firefox and Tor Browser announced on May 24† This release was delayed from May 31 to June 5 because of a delay in the release of Tor Browser 11.0.14†Changes and updates Tor Connection assistant
Tails 5.1 includes many improvements to the Tor Connection assistant:

• The Tor Connection assistant now automatically fixes the computer clock if you choose to connect to Tor automatically.
  This makes is much easier for people in Asia to circumvent censorship.
  Tails learns the current time by connecting to the captive portal detection service of fedora, which is used by most Linux distributions. This connection does not go through the Tor network and is an exception to our policy of only making Internet connections through the Tor network.
  You can learn more about our security assessment of this time synchronization in our design documentation about non-Tor traffic†
• The time displayed in the top navigation uses the time zone selected when fixing the clock in the Tor Connection assistant.
  In the future, we will make it possible to change the displayed time zone for everybody from the desktop (#10819) and store it in the Persistent Storage (#12094†
• The last screen of the Tor Connection assistant makes it clear whether you are connected using Tor bridges or not.

Unsafe Browser and captive portals

• We wrote a new homepage for the Unsafe Browser when you are not connected to the Tor network yet. This new version makes it easier to understand how to sign in to the network using a captive portal.
• Tails now asks for confirmation before restarting when the Unsafe Browser was not enabled in the Welcome Screen. This prevents losing work too easily.

Kleopatra

• Associate OpenPGP files with Kleopatra in the Files browser.
  You can now double-click on .gpg files to decrypt them.
• Add Kleopatra to the Favorites applications.

Included software

• Update tor to 0.4.7.7.
• Update Tor Browser to 11.0.14†
• Update Thunderbird to 91.9†
• Update the Linux kernel to 5.10.113. This should improve the support for newer hardware: graphics, Wi-Fi, and so on.

Fixed problems

• Remove the automatic selection of the option Configure a bridge when rolling back from the option to hide that you are connecting to Tor. †#18546†
• Give the same instructions on both screens where you have to configure a bridge. †#18596†
• Help rename the default KeePassXC database to open it automatically in the future. †#18966†
• Fix sharing files using OnionShare from the Files browser. †#18990†
• Disable search providers in the Activities overview: files, calculator, and terminal. †#18952†

For more details, read our changelog†