As planned, the Tails project has announced the general availability of Tails 3.1. The developers are strongly encouraging users of older releases to upgrade as soon as possible because it closes several security vulnerabilities and upgrades the Tor Browser to the latest version based on the newest Firefox ESR.
The two major changes in Tails 3.1 are that the Tor Browser has been upgraded to 7.0.4 and the Linux kernel has been upgraded to 4.9.30-2+deb9u3. The new Tor Browser will be the main reason to upgrade, to make sure that bugs in the browser aren’t being exploited to remove the anonymity of the user. The final detail to note is that this release is based on the new Debian 9.1, which was released in July.
There are also a few problems which have been fixed in Tails 3.1, they are:
- Make sure that Thunderbird erases its temporary directory, containing for example attachments opened in the past.
- Fix translations of the time synchronization and “Tor is ready” notifications.
To get the new update, you can either do a clean install or do a manual upgrade. Both options have well-detailed instructions accompanied by screenshots making it easy to create your new Tails live USB. Unfortunately for existing users, the automatic upgrade from 3.0.1 to 3.1 has been disabled due to some issues, but Tails 3.0 users can jump directly to 3.1 with an automatic upgrade.
Tails 3.2 is scheduled for release on October 3, and version 3.3 will be out on November 14. While the team behind the OS seems to be good at meeting their deadlines, you should assume that the dates listed could change. To see where the project is headed over the coming years, feel free to give their roadmap a look.
Source: Tails