Tor Project wags Tails to mark privacy project merger

Onion Amnesia: Steaming up your digital disguise

The Tor Project, a non-profit focused on network anonymity, is joining forces with Tails, an anonymity-focused Linux distribution, in an effort to make better use of financial and technical resources.

"By bringing these two organizations together, we’re not just making things easier for our teams, but ensuring the sustainable development and advancement of these vital tools," Isabela Fernandes, executive director of The Tor Project, said in a statement.

"Working together allows for faster, more efficient collaboration, enabling the quick integration of new features from one tool to the other. This collaboration strengthens our mission and accelerates our ability to respond to evolving threats."

In the mid-1990s, United States Naval Research Laboratory personnel developed a networking scheme known as onion routing to obscure the transit of network traffic. By 2004, The Onion Routing (Tor) software was released under a free license. Two years later, The Tor Project was founded as an education- and research-focused non-profit.

The Tor proxy (and subsequent projects like the Tor Browser) aims to safeguard online privacy and anonymity by thwarting surveillance and censorship. It's used for popular and unpopular activities, for conduct that's lawful and unlawful – terms that cover various activities in different jurisdictions.

Despite the US First Amendment guarantee of free speech, there's persistent pressure to limit secure communication tools or backdoor them. As with encryption, politicians and lawmakers like to imagine that tools for privacy and security can be made to work selectively. In Russia, Tor has been blocked. China and Iran also block Tor, but not always effectively.

Tor itself isn't always effective, either, though that's not necessarily the result of technical shortcomings. German police recently managed to identify at least one Tor user through a network timing attack. According to Tor representatives, the cops likely took advantage of outdated software.

Tails, which stands for "The Amnesic Incognito Live System," is a younger project. Launched in 2009, it's a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution designed to boot from portable storage on suitable hardware and to run in-memory, without writing to the device. That way, no record of the user's activities is left on the device once Tails is shut down.

Discussions about bringing Tor and Tails together began in 2023, based on concern that Tails had become popular enough that it could no longer be managed effectively given the project structure at the time.

"The decision to join forces was driven by the benefits for greater collaboration and efficiency," Pavel Zoneff, director of strategic communications for The Tor Project, told The Register. "The merger will ensure the sustainable development of both Tor and Tails. While Tails workers will now be part of The Tor Project’s organizational structure – with some employees joining existing teams, and the Tails OS developers forming their own unit, led by intrigeri – Tails OS will continue to exist as a separate project."

The collaboration will enhance both tools and make them more complementary, to the benefit of their mutual mission to protect online privacy and freedom, according to Zoneff.

"Over time, the organizations will be able to reach new audiences and users, particularly those at high risk like journalists and activists, while ensuring that their tools stay relevant in an evolving threat landscape," said Zoneff.

Closer cooperation should improve the overall user experience, lead to better integration of the tools, faster updates, and stronger network-level and system-level security, Zoneff noted. ®