Bug #7073
Cloning Tails from installer copies all files from the live partition
0%
Description
With options Clone & Install and Clone & Upgrade the Tails Installer copies not only the necessary live system files but also all other files on the same partition. So if tails is installed on a USB stick or a SD card and the user stored some other files on the same partition, those files will be copied too.
Subtasks
Related issues
|
Related to Tails - |
Confirmed | 2016-04-29 | |
|
Has duplicate Tails - |
Duplicate | 2016-04-29 |
History
#1 Updated by intrigeri 2014-04-12 12:20:50
> With options Clone & Install and Clone & Upgrade the Tails Installer copies not only
> the necessary live system files but also all other files on the
> same partition.
We could avoid this if our ISO (and thus, an installed Tails) was
shipped with a manifest (a list of its content). It might be that
live-build is able to generate this. Otherwise, hopefully a binary
local hook might do the job. Are you interested to look into this?
> So if tails is installed on a USB stick or a SD card and the user
> stored some other files on the same partition, those files will be
> copied too.
FYI, we don’t recommend nor support this usecase, since it encourages
people to plug their Tails USB stick into computers running untrusted
operating systems who could corrupt the installed Tails.
That’s why we flag the Tails system partition so that it’s hidden (in
operating systems that support such flags).
#2 Updated by intrigeri 2014-04-12 12:25:35
- Category set to Installation
- Status changed from New to Confirmed
- Priority changed from Normal to Low
Given this is about an unsupported usecase, I’m setting a low priority on this ticket, which means: Tails core developers are unlikely to work on this, but good patches are welcome.
#3 Updated by segfault 2014-04-12 14:33:37
> FYI, we don’t recommend nor support this usecase, since it encourages
> people to plug their Tails USB stick into computers running untrusted
> operating systems who could corrupt the installed Tails.
That’s a good point. I didn’t think about this before. I can’t find it in the documentation, maybe there should be a hint/warning?
#4 Updated by intrigeri 2014-04-12 14:45:03
> I can’t find it in the documentation, maybe there should be
> a hint/warning?
Yes, maybe. Please file a ticket about that :)
#5 Updated by BitingBird 2015-01-04 19:03:02
- Affected tool set to Installer
#6 Updated by segfault 2016-05-02 16:25:27
- has duplicate
Bug #11388: Tails Installer clones any garbage to any new device added
#7 Updated by sajolida 2016-05-05 06:32:23
- related to
Bug #11387: Tails upgrader left garbage in Tails partition added
#8 Updated by sajolida 2016-05-05 06:36:43
In Bug #11387 we learned that a failed upgrade is a legit scenario that can lead to garbage on the system partition. So this is not only about unsupported use cases.
#9 Updated by intrigeri 2016-05-05 09:04:44
> In Bug #11387 we learned that a failed upgrade is a legit scenario that can lead to garbage on the system partition. So this is not only about unsupported use cases.
… and there I’ve just argued that even if a failed upgrade is (of course :) a legit scenario, cloning the stick that failed to upgrade is not; and even though we fixed Bug #7073, then we would mostly be hiding the biggest problem of the post-failed-upgrade cloning.
Now, I still think that we should fix Bug #7073 some day, just not for that reason :)