Tails 7.10.1

Tails is a live system with one governing design goal: leave nothing behind. It boots from a USB stick, forces every network connection through the Tor network, and by default forgets everything when you shut down. The name is an acronym for The Amnesic Incognito Live System, and both halves of that describe the threat model it addresses.

What “amnesic” buys you

Because nothing is written to the host machine’s disks, the computer you used carries no record of the session. Combined with mandatory Tor routing, that covers a specific and serious set of risks: journalists working from untrusted hardware, people under surveillance, and anyone who needs a session that cannot be reconstructed afterward. Optional encrypted Persistent Storage on the same USB stick can retain specific files, keys, and settings when you explicitly want them.

This release is a security update

7.10.1 is an emergency release fixing critical vulnerabilities: the kernel moves to 6.12.100 to address a flaw that could let Tor Browser escalate to administrator privileges, and the expat XML library is updated to 2.8.2 for a related set of privilege escalation issues. If you run Tails, update rather than continuing on an older image.

Installing

Tails is written to a USB stick rather than installed conventionally, and the project’s installation instructions vary by the operating system you are starting from. Verification matters more here than for almost any other download on this site: a tampered Tails image defeats the entire point, and the project provides both a browser-based verification extension and OpenPGP signatures.

What Tails is not

Tails protects the session, not you. It cannot help if you log into accounts that identify you, and it does not make the underlying hardware trustworthy. It is one carefully built layer, not a guarantee.

Verify Your Download

Follow the signature verification steps at tails.net/install before writing the image; do not skip this step.