Tails 7.15.1 emergency update blocks compromised eMudhra certificates
The Tails developers say the update removes a certificate authority whose intermediate certificates were compromised, after Mozilla blocked its certificates on October 17.
AI illustrationThe Tails developers have put out version 7.15.1 of the operating system as an emergency release. Its purpose is to remove a certificate authority, eMudhra, whose intermediate certificates had been compromised.
According to the developers, Mozilla blocked eMudhra's certificates on October 17. The new Tails version ships Tor Browser 15.0.26, which also blocks every eMudhra certificate and fixes the flaw tracked as CVE-2026-113470.
The developers warned that an attacker holding one of the compromised intermediate certificates could pose as any website, even when the connection uses HTTPS. They said such an attack could be carried out by a Tor exit node, by the internet provider serving an exit node, or by a government. Onion sites are not exposed to it. The developers said they do not know of exit nodes having used this attack so far.
The fix is not limited to the browser. Other programs in Tails also depend on the certificate authorities bundled through the ca-certificates Debian package to protect their connections, and the release updates that list so that those programs block all eMudhra certificates too.
Users running Tails 7.0 or later can move to 7.15.1 through an automatic upgrade. The developers advise a manual upgrade for anyone who cannot upgrade automatically or whose system fails to start after doing so. Installing the new version on a fresh USB stick, instead of upgrading, erases the Persistent Storage on that stick, they noted. Images for USB sticks, and for DVDs and virtual machines, are also offered as direct downloads.