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Those two changes seem particularly important: * Tails 3.0 works on 64-bit computers only and not on 32-bit computers anymore. Dropping hardware support, even
by d33 9y ago
Those two changes seem particularly important:
* Tails 3.0 works on 64-bit computers only and not on 32-bit computers anymore. Dropping hardware support, even for a small portion of our user base, is always a hard decision to make but being 64-bit only has important security and reliability benefits. For example, to protect against some types of security exploits, support for the NX bit is compulsory and most binaries are hardened with PIE which allows ASLR.
* Update Tor Browser to 7.0 (based on Firefox 52 ESR) which is multiprocess and paves the way to content sandboxing. This should make it harder to exploit security vulnerabilities in the browser.
What do you guys think about dropping 32-bit?
- codewiz 9y agoWhat do you guys think about dropping 32-bit? About time.
- sft 9y ago>What do you guys think about dropping 32-bit? Nothing of value lost.
- kakarot 9y ago32-bit is insecure. There's no good reason to support it. Get a cheap old laptop if you have 32-bit machine for some reason, it's good to have separate hardware for this type of thing anyway.
- venomsnake 9y agoHas there been any pure x86 processor in the last 10 year at all?
- jwilk 9y agoEarly Intel Atom CPUs in 2008 were 32-bit only.
- skraelingjar 9y agoI wonder if this will effect journalists and activists in parts of the world where old machines are still used (Africa, Middle East, parts of Asia). Not being able to make use of newer browser versions (without updating every time or taking the risk of using a persistent volume) could put them at greater risk.
- jwilk 9y agoPrevious versions of Tails already had exuberant hardware requirements. I guess privacy is only for the rich.
- weberc2 9y agoYeah, this is a consequence of limited resources. In an ideal world, the good guys would have resources for all the things, I guess.
- nextlevelwizard 9y agoLiterally nothing is preventing you from creating your own secure Linux installation on any hardware you've got.
- ViViDboarder 9y agoBesides ones technical skills. Not all activists are knowledgeable enough to just roll their own distro.
- Sir_Substance 9y agoBeyond that, I thought it was now well understood that rolling ones own security software is a terrible idea. Many eyeballs etc. Activists with the technical skills /should not/ roll their own, they should definitely contribute to existing projects.
- Laforet 9y agoI don't think it is unreasonable to assume everyone already has a 64-bit capable PC considering the most recent mainstream 32-bit only CPU is 2004's first gen Prescott Pentium 4.
- dogma1138 9y agoIntel early centrinos are not 64bit (Dothan / Banias) so are the initial Core / Core Duo CPUs (Yona). Intel didn't release a mobile 64bit CPU until 2006/7 with Core 2 Duo. Also the initial implementations of Intel64/EMT64 lack certain functions so even tho they technically support 64bit they might lack certain other features that are required by modern operating systems. So overall if you have a 10 year old laptop you might not be able to use Tails 3.0.
- openmosix 9y agoYou can run Tails on a supercheap chromebook. It seems a right product compromise.
- barbs 9y agoI understand thst 32-bit is inherently less secure than 64-bit but if you had no choice but to use a 32-bit computer, what would be the best way to provide yourself with similar security features? I guess you could use an older version of Tails but I imagine this would become less and less secure as more and more vulnerabilities are found.
- nickpsecurity 9y agoThe 32-bit computers are the only thing available to lots of poor people or those just relying on other people's computers. People's teenagers, people using libraries, workers with legacy systems, and Internet cafes come to mind. Dropping it is a mistake if both could be supported. If it was lack of contributions or funding, I can understand the perspective of focusing on most secure one. EDIT to add: Always remember with solutions like this that the adversary isn't always the NSA and so on. The Tor users' page lists all kinds of people who need help against foes with limited budgets or knowledge who might not be able to break Linux or Tor. https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en
- mrmondo 9y agoI can't honestly say I've seen a 32bit computer in what must be nearly a decade now?
- stevekemp 9y agoA lot of hosting companies run KVM/qemu/Xen or even UML with 32-bit guests by default. But yeah in terms of physical computers 64-bit has long been the default. I remember upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit in-place a few times, which is a bit fiddly but not impossible with Debian. I wrote up a couple of guides once upon a time, but right now I can just find this old wiki-page discussing the process: https://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit https://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit
- Tepix 9y agoSure but cheap Intel Atom N270 netbooks are probably still being used in poor countries even though they were released around 2008/2009.
- vbezhenar 9y ago> What do you guys think about dropping 32-bit? If they don't have any usage data, I think, they should provide old version and support it with critical security updates. If they have usage data, it depends, I guess.
- teekert 9y agoI still occasionally use My Asus 1000HE (early 2009) and my Sony Vaio FE11S (2006), both still run fine with Arch/Ubuntu and Mate. Getting more and more difficult to find distro's though.
- akerro 9y agofreebsd, debian won't drop 32bit any time soon.
- DanBC 9y agoThere are a bunch of new machines that have 64 bit processors but tiny amounts of RAM. The low ram makes 64 bit OSs unfun to use, and most recommendations (Microsoft, Arch, Debian, etc) are to avoid 64 bit OSs on these machines. If you're someone buying burner laptops these machines, which are very cheap, are now probably not a good idea.