Whonix Old Stable and Earlier Releases

About this Whonix Old Stable and Earlier Releases Page
Support Status	stable
Difficulty	easy
Maintainer	torjunkie
Support	Support

Whonix ™ 13 Changelog

Whonix ™ 13 was released on May 31, 2016. Whonix ™ 13 contains many small security and usability improvements, features and bug fixes.

Descriptions of changes in Whonix ™ 12 and earlier versions can be found on sourceforge.net.

All Platforms

AppArmor

• Fixed the Tor Browser AppArmor profile to allow correct functionality.
• Resolved AppArmor conflicts affecting Pidgin, Chromium and Evince.
• Merged AppArmor profiles for sdwdate, timesync and whonix-check into their corresponding packages and now install them by default.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed broken whonix-setup-wizard functionality.

Code

• Updated Whonix ™ code for Tor Browser tb-updater.
• Refactored the Whonix ™ socks redirection firewall rules to reduce their size and use less script code.
• Refactored Whonix ™ code so that scripts only use configuration files that end with the .conf extension.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Modified whonixcheck to test for slow or fast system clocks which prevent Tor from properly connecting.
• Implemented an explicit check for timekeeping watchdog kernel messages in whonixcheck, so users are warned about clock jumps which prevent / time-out Tor connections.
• Enforced maximized terminal windows for xdg desktop users.
• Enabled Transparent Proxy Ports for Whonix-Gateway ™ by default (except for Whonix ™-Firewall).
• Configured Whonix ™ to use /etc/skel instead of writing to the home folder directly to maintain forward compatibility with Qubes. Further, this allows for proper error-handling where "user" is hardcoded in Whonix ™, and a newly created account with a different name has been used.
• Deprecated the timesync progress bar and replaced it with a tray icon using sdwdate-gui to improve usability and reduce confusion.
• Created a stable-proposed-updates repository for users who want to help in testing Whonix ™ fixes, without resorting to the testers repository which comes with many more changes.
• Moved the WhonixBackupScript to the usability-misc package to make it more accessible.
• Replaced XChat with HexChat, since the former is no longer actively maintained, and created a new AppArmor profile to contain it.
• Implemented a VPN_FIREWALL feature as part of whonix-ws-firewall.

Security Enhancements

• Created a security-misc package that turns off Nautilus and Dolphin file previews by default, since this poses security risks.
• A known, good version of Tor is now maintained and uploaded to the Whonix ™ repository from deb.torproject.org
• Uploaded the Tor 0.3.2.9 major (stable) release to the Whonix ™ repository to enable full v3 onion functionality for both hosting of onion services and access to v3 onion addresses in Tor Browser.
• Extended the lifetime of the Whonix ™ signing key.
• Sourced new onion services webservers for the sdwdate feature, which ensures the system's clock is correctly set for security, privacy and anonymity purposes.

Qubes-Whonix ™

Bug Fixes

• Fixed qubes-whonix-firewall systemd service start.
• Resolved whonixcheck fixes for Qubes R4.
• Corrected false positive failure messages for the updates proxy test in Qubes R4.
• Disabled qubes-SetDateTime / qubes.SyncNtpClock in Qubes-Whonix ™ VMs since it interfered with timesync.
• Resolved accumulation of old Tor Browser instances in /var/cache/tb-binary/.tb/ which caused users to run into full disk error messages.
• Resolved an occasional error message whereby Whonix ™ templates incorrectly reported they were not connected to the Whonix-Gateway ™ ProxyVM.
• Resolved the broken anon-ws-disable-stackedtor function in Qubes-Whonix ™.
• Enforced the opening of all links from sys-whonix, whonix-gw and whonix-ws in the anon-whonix AppVM to prevent error messages.

Builds

• Corrected the build failure of Whonix-Workstation ™ template in Qubes-Whonix ™ R3.2 and added the qubes-template-whonix to continuous integration service TravisCI.
• Resolved Whonix ™ template build failures in Qubes R4 related to Tor Browser downloads.
• Changed the Qubes-Whonix ™ build process to install Whonix ™ from the Whonix ™ binary APT repository. This simplifies code, results in faster builds, removes build dependencies inside the template, and reduces the overall template size.
• Allowed the Whonix ™ build script to run as root and reworked user_name.

Code

• Removed fetching of Whonix ™ source code in qubes-template-whonix.
• Removed the qubes-update-check system service from Qubes-Whonix ™ TemplateVMs, since it was unnecessary.
• Reworked / removed a number of installed packages in Qubes-Whonix ™ which are only required for the Non-Qubes-Whonix ™ desktop.
• Removed the default username and password in the Qubes-Whonix ™ terminal, because it is not required.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Ported whonixcheck and tb-updater to Qubes' qrexec-based updates proxy, since TemplateVMs are non-networked by default in Qubes R4.
• Changed the tb-updater configuration to use Qubes updates proxy, since Qubes R4 sets the NetVM of TemplateVMs to none by default.
• Implemented the ability to install Whonix-Workstation ™ and Whonix-Gateway ™ from dom0 with a sudo apt-get install whonix-(workstation|gateway) feature.
• Ported the bind-directories functionality upstream to Qubes.
• Implemented the new bind-directories functionality in Qubes-Whonix ™.
• Implemented a check for whether the whonix-gw ProxyVM (sys-whonix) has a NetVM which is set to "none", with a warning shown if this is the case.
• Implemented a new feature so that following an update of the Whonix-Workstation ™ TemplateVM, newly created AppVMs based on the updated TemplateVM come with an up-to-date version of Tor Browser.
• Modified whonixcheck to check if: Whonix-Gateway ™ is running in a NetVM or ProxyVM; Whonix-Workstation ™ is running in an AppVM; and to skip the test if a TemplateVM is detected.

Security Enhancements

• Prevented /usr/lib/qubes/qubes-setup-dnat-to-ns from running in Qubes-Whonix ™ to stop it from modifying firewall rules.

Whonix ™ 14 Changelog

Whonix ™ 14 was released on August 6, 2018. Significantly, Whonix ™ 14 is based on the Debian stretch (Debian 9) distribution which was released in mid-2017, instead of Debian jessie (Debian 8). Users now have access to numerous updated and new software packages, a more modern branch of GnuPG, and more.

All Platforms

AppArmor

• Fixed the whonixcheck AppArmor profile to remove continuous denied messages relating to signal.
• Fixed the AppArmor profile for obfs4proxy to enable correct functioning of Tor Bridges in Whonix-Gateway ™.
• Fixed the Tor Browser AppArmor profile to allow correct functionality.
• Corrected the tor-controlport-filter AppArmor profile to ensure correct functioning.
• Removed the Pidgin AppArmor profile, since Pidgin is recommended against for security reasons.
• Hardened the Control Port Filter AppArmor profile.
• Disabled installation of apparmor-notify (AppArmor notifications) by default, thereby removing the reporting of mostly harmless denied messages.

Bug Fixes

• Corrected the broken whonix-setup-wizard autostart on Whonix-Gateway ™.
• Fixed sdwdate-gui freezing when using right-click in the menu.
• Fixed dependency issues which prevented the whonix-setup-wizard gui from starting.
• Implemented the correct Tor --verify command for Whonix-Gateway ™ torrc configuration checks to prevent the reporting of false positives.
• Modified the uwt wrapper script to correctly handle symbolic links.
• Changed the Whonix-Gateway ™ firewall prerouting rules for socks ports so they do not interfere with trans port traffic.
• Modified whonixcheck to first test if network interfaces are up to prevent the test from failing unnecessarily.
• Fixed a whonixcheck whonix-firewall check race condition.

Builds

• Resolved genmkfile build dependencies for building Whonix-Workstation ™ and Whonix-Gateway ™.
• Confirmed the new and upgraded Whonix ™ 14 builds are identical.
• Fixed debian/control parsing with respect to make_deb_build_dependencies / make_deb_runtime_dependencies.

Code

• Updated Whonix ™ code for Tor Browser tb-updater.
• Changed the bindp compile to postinstall to make it cross-platform (Qubes, 64-bit, 32-bit).
• Rewrote sclockadj in C and updated the sdwdate package to compile sclockadj.
• Implemented symlinks for onion-grater profiles to maintain functionality following profile upgrades.
• Enhanced onion checking in sdwdate to improve the unit test.
• Ported msgcollector to python3 and python3-pyqt5.
• Ported whonix-setup-wizard to python3.
• Ported python-guimessages to python3.
• Rewrote sdwdate to ensure python exceptions are written to the journal.
• Rewrote control-port-filter-python to ensure exceptions are written to the journal.
• Re-added some non-essential packages to Whonix ™ that were removed from Debian stretch.
• Ported helper-scripts so they instead use Tor authentication cookies.
• Ported whonixcheck check_tor_socks_port_reachability.bsh to use the Tor unix domain socket socks file.
• Ported anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor to systemd socket activation to remove unnecessary, idle socat listeners.
• Removed auditd configuration folder parsing /etc/audit/rules.d/ by default, since the feature has been implemented upstream.
• Implemented anonymous counting of Whonix ™ users via the whonixcheck Whonix ™ News function.
• Implemented, but did not activate changes to the Whonix ™ firewall so: sdwdate is stopped before suspend; timesync-fail-closed mode is set before suspend; sdwdate is restarted after resume; and Whonix ™ firewall enters full mode after resume following successful sdwdate activation.
• Configured auditd to process the configuration folder /etc/audit/rules.d/ by default to aid debugging.
• Implemented monitoring of changes to /var/lib/tor/lock access rights via auditd to aid debugging.
• Modified anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor to maintain Tor Browser functionality with Unix domain socket files redirection and prevent Tor over Tor scenarios.
• Configured whonixcheck to test for failed daemons.
• Implemented a sdwdate sd_notify systemd watchdog.
• Disabled systemd-resolved and instead implemented a /lib/systemd/system/systemd-resolved.service.d/ drop-in.
• Ported /usr/sbin/service to systemctl as the latter runs non-interactively.
• Disabled timedatectl network time synchronization in Debian stretch to prevent conflicts with sdwdate.
• Removed brltty, brltty-speechd and brltty-x11 since they create a local listener port which may conflict with onion-grater.
• Modified anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor systemd-unit-files-generator so it is configurable.
• Rewrote slockadj3 in C and determined how to prevent spamming of sclockadj3 time changes to logs.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Implemented the major new Anon Connection Wizard feature to simplify connections to the Tor network via a Tor bridge and/or a proxy.
• Integrated the Tor Pluggable Transport meek_lite.
• Integrated anon-connection-wizard into whonix-setup-wizard, so that the latter can now start the former.
• Removed the Control Port Filter Proxy script from anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor since it is no longer required for proper Tor connections or Tor Browser functions (its functionality is now replaced by onion-grater). This means Ricochet, Zeronet and OnionShare are now compatible with Whonix ™.
• Installed necessary dependencies for proper ZeroNet functionality.
• Installed onioncircuits by default in Whonix-Gateway ™.
• Added --list-interface to tor-controlport-filter, as it works better with dynamic IP addresses.
• Added a /etc/tor-controlport-filter.d configuration extension feature.
• Fixed the control-port-filer-python configuration to rewrite HS_DESC replies by Tor, so OnionShare is supported.
• Merged the tor-controlport-filter by Tails for various enhancements.
• Implemented more user-friendly error messages (instead of tb-starter error handlers) when non-Whonix ™ related Tor Browser issues cause start-tor-browser to fail and exit zero.
• Implemented sane built-in defaults for whonix-gw-firewall, whonix-ws-firewall, whonixcheck, sdwdate, uwt, onion-grater, rads, open-link-confirmation, tb-starter and tb-updater, even if configuration files do not exist.
• Changed uwt to set AllowOutboundLocalhost / AllowInbound which can help make servers utilizing Tor onion services work.
• Implemented a sd_notify watchdog feature for onion-grater so the service is restarted if it appears to be running, but has became unresponsive.
• Created a bindp Whonix ™ package to enable Whonix-Workstation ™ applications that use Tor ephemeral onion services to bind on all interfaces as necessary.
• Modified sdwdate to check if the clock is changed "behind the back" of the program and suggest a manual user fix.
• Improved default torsocks information / warning messages when wrapped commands are invoked to reduce user confusion.
• Both Non-Qubes-Whonix ™ and Qubes-Whonix ™ are now compatible with the Tor Project's sandboxed Tor Browser.

Security Enhancements

• Confirmed functionality of the kloak anti-keystroke deanonymization tool in Whonix ™.
• Identified more reliable onion servers as appropriate time sources for sdwdate, which enables correct network time synchronization for anonymity-focused distributions.
• Implemented Tails' Control Port Filter Proxy in Whonix ™ and merged recent changes since it was forked.
• Fixed security and hardening (stack canary) issues with the bindp libindp.so package (which were merged upstream).
• Uploaded Tor version 0.3.3.9 (stable) release to the Whonix ™ repository to enable full v3 onion functionality for both hosting of onion services and access to v3 onion addresses in Tor Browser.
• Onion sources are now preferred for Whonix ™ updates/upgrades for greater security. Note: this change has been reverted due to the unreliable nature of onion connections at present - see footnote.
• Disabled the apt-timer in Debian stretch to prevent auto updates, thereby preventing the attendant security risks associated with background updates without user input.
• Disabled nautilus previews by default due to the security risks.
• Implemented uwt to set TORSOCKS_ISOLATE_PID in Debian Stretch so all uwt wrapped applications are stream isolated.
• Implemented tor+http / apt-transport-tor rather than Acquire::BlockDotOnion "false" for better security and stream isolation.
• Disabled the systemd DNS resolver feature in order to reduce the attack surface and to remove the potential for adverse anonymity impacts.
• Established a dedicated Whonix ™.org repository, with appropriate redirects from Whonix ™ mirrors.
• Removed the DHCP client from Whonix-Gateway ™ and switched to a static network configuration so the dhclient is no longer present on all interfaces, including the internal network.
• Disabled VLC metadata collection by default.
• Disabled "Obey DRM limitations" in Okular, since Digital Rights Management (DRM) can be used as a tracking vector.

Non-Qubes-Whonix

Desktop shortcuts are no longer available in Non-Qubes-Whonix ™.

Bug Fixes

• Increased the Whonix-Gateway ™ VRAM in VirtualBox from 8 to 16 MB to avoid error messages and possible video problems when using full screen mode.
• Corrected sdwdate-gui systray so it properly registers in kde systray and does not appear as a gap in the Entry column.
• Corrected the sdwdate-gui tray icon so it is visible in Debian stretch.
• Corrected the virtualization detection method to properly recognize KVM.

Builds

• Reduced the size of the default, binary Whonix ™ images by approximately 50 per cent using zerofree.

Code

• Removed kmix-disable-autostart since it is no longer required to make sure the clipboard history icon is loaded into the system tray.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Created the grub-live package which can run Whonix ™ as a live system.
• Added Kscreen to Whonix ™ by default in order to allow DPI scaling and other basic desktop features of Plasma 5.
• Removed the VirtualBox shared folder and confirmed automounting of shares is enabled in Debian stretch.

Security Enhancements

• Removed okular from anon-shared-applications-kde to anon-workstation-default-applications so it is not installed on Whonix-Gateway ™.
• Hide the CPUID in VirtualBox 5 by setting generic values via HostCPUID.

Qubes-Whonix ™

Bug Fixes

• Implemented whonixcheck fixes for Qubes R4.
• Corrected false positive failure messages for the updates proxy test in Qubes R4.
• Resolved non-functionality of Tor Browser due to jemalloc corruption.
• Resolved segfaults in Tor Browser caused by excessive string length in the XDG_CONFIG_DIRS environment variable.
• Resolved accumulation of old Tor Browser instances in /var/cache/tb-binary/.tb/ which caused users to run into full disk error messages.
• Corrected dependencies in the qubes-whonix package to resolve issues when upgrading to Debian stretch.
• Fixed a corridor lintian warning on Debian related to systemd documentation.
• Resolved error messages associated with tput using an empty TERM environment variable.
• Resolved the failure of tb-updater to copy Tor Browser into the user's home directory on first VM startup in Qubes R4.
• Implemented the correct appmenus for Qubes-Whonix ™ 14 TemplateVMs and fixed missing appmenu entries.
• Resolved the false positive timedatectl error message when using whonixcheck.
• Corrected the absent 'Connected to Tor.' message, which arose due to a missing notification daemon.
• Resolved non-persistence of files in /usr/local, such as the Tor configuration file.
• Implemented a qvm-features-request whonix-ws=1, so that newly created Whonix-Workstation ™ AppVMs inherit the anon-vm tag.
• Created qubes-core-admin-addon-whonix to enforce the anon-vm tag for newly created Whonix-Workstation ™ AppVMs.
• Removed redundant warning messages affecting Whonix-Workstation ™ DisposableVMs that related to the first invocation of an open-link-confirmation.
• Fixed an apt-get package issue whereby some users were downgraded to a known vulnerable version.
• Corrected an aptitude update failure which affected all Qubes-Whonix ™ VMs.
• Installed Tor Browser by default in Whonix-Workstation ™-DisposableVMs, as it was previously missing upon VM launch.
• Fixed the periodic failure of Whonix-Workstation ™ AppVMs to start correctly, which prevented the launch of any user applications.
• Fixed an error which caused /etc in Qubes-Whonix ™ templates to be owned by user:user

Builds

• Corrected the build failure of the Whonix-Workstation ™ template in Qubes-Whonix ™ R3.2 and added qubes-template-whonix to the continuous integration service TravisCI.
• Removed older unstable Whonix ™ 14 builds from Qubes' unstable repository.
• Resolved unexpected build failures.
• Removed Whonix ™ 14 templates from Qubes' unstable repository, since testing versions now reside in qubes-templates-community-testing.
• Backported versioning of Whonix ™ template names from Qubes R4 to Qubes R3.2 to simplify the installation procedure for users on the earlier platform.

Code

• Removed cups and system-config-printer from Whonix-Workstation ™, since printing capabilities are better suited to alternate VMs and this also removes a local TCP listener that is otherwise created.
• Corrected anon-meta-packages compatibility for Qubes R3.2 and R4.
• Installed pulseaudio-qubes for audio support and removed pulseaudio and VLC from sys-whonix.
• Created a qvm-features-request whonix-gw=1 as a prerequisite for sdwdate-gui-qubes.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Confirmed full Qubes-Whonix ™ compatibility with Qubes R4.
• Confirmed Qubes-Whonix-Workstation has full DispVM support.
• Created a tb-updater storage path for Qubes R4 so new AppVMs and DisposableVMs have a copy of the latest Tor Browser version.
• Created Qubes-Whonix ™ 14 SaltStack state files with flexible versioning for future releases.
• Modified Qubes-Whonix ™ Salt code so the repository is not hard-coded, allowing users to choose either the qubes-templates-community or qubes-templates-community-testing repository.

Licensing

• Added a COPYING file to the Qubes-Whonix ™ template repository to assure users they are covered by a free software license.

Security Enhancements

• Added Qubes-Whonix ™ tags on domain-load rather than upon VM creation to avoid missing tags for users that upgrade.

---

Whonix ™ 14 Updates

As Whonix ™ is now a rolling distribution, users will benefit from regular small security and usability improvements, features and bug fixes as they enter the Whonix ™ stable repository. Those will be announced here.

Documentation

• Simplified Whonix ™ Documentation.
• Documented multiple Qubes TemplateVMs.
• Documented a recovery procedure after a (suspected) compromise.
• Created a systemd-socket-proxyd instructions template.
• Conducted research into Single Tor-Gateway with Multiple Workstations versus Multiple Tor-Gateways mapped 1:1 to Workstation VMs.
• Documented identity correlation attacks and defenses / removing the Apache recommendation.
• Created an apt-get Qubes template.
• Documented how to use SecBrowser and configured a secbrowser wrapper that disables Tor.
• Updated the Control Port Filter Proxy wiki page.
• Created documentation for ZeroNet support.
• Finalized wiki edits for numerous, outstanding documentation fixes and additions.

Website Fixes and Outreach

• Website fixes: implemented the proposed download directory structure as well as download redirects, stable download links and permalinks.
• Implemented numerous mediawiki fixes for better website presentation.
• Opened a Peertube video channel.
• Updated Release Announcements to collate all places where this should be posted.
• Post Whonix release announcements in crypto currency Reddit forums.
• Researched social media strategies to increase Whonix ™ awareness.
• Established mirroring of all Whonix ™ announcements.
• Bookmarked the outreach workboard.
• Signed the Whonix ™ developer team up to various developer mailing lists.

All Platforms

AppArmor

• Corrected the dnscrypt-proxy AppArmor profile for full functionality.
• Removed unnecessary and extensive capabilities from the Tor Browser AppArmor profile.
• Amended the Tor Browser AppArmor profiles so 8.* versions correctly launch.
• Added capability sys_module to whonixcheck because it is required for ifconfig.
• Added a wildcard for non-Tor or modified Tor Browser Bundles.
• Deprecated /etc/apparmor.d/home.tor-browser.start-tor-browser due to broken functionality.
• Added various permissions to the XChat AppArmor profile for greater functionality.

Bug Fixes

• Implemented an automated /var/lib/tor permission fix.
• Installed the missing pinentry-qt package so Enigmail decryption is functional.
• Fixed the Whonix custom firewall settings start menu entry in Whonix XFCE.
• Fixed the false-positive "Tor Browser not installed" message in tb-starter.
• Onion-grater: fix Tor control auth cookie authentication even if HashedControlPassword is set.
• Fixed output when using open-link-confirmation.
• Change etc/.skel to etc/skel/Downloads in all code.

Builds

• Released new Whonix 14 builds to address the APT security update bug.

Code

• whonixcheck: grep journal for "fail", "error" and "denied".
• Re-implemented Tor Browser local version number detection.
• Decided against virtualizer configurations which attempt to hide the CPU model.
• Moved kcalc, okular, gwenview, kgpg, libkf5kipi31.0.0 and libkf5kipi-data from hardened-desktop-applications-kde to non-qubes-whonix-workstation-kde and qubes-whonix-workstation.
• Simplified code by using apt-key rather than custom code when adding a gpg key.
• Fixed the mime type in whonix-repository.
• Refactored the whonixcheck code and included an option to show "sudo apt-get-update-plus dist-upgrade" if it is available.
• Ported the IP check in whonixcheck to https://check.torproject.org/api/ip
• sdwdate-gui: permission lockdown, fixed merge conflicts, avoidance of 'clock is fast' false positives and other miscellaneous fixes.
• anon-ws-disable-stacked-tor: set 'restart' rather than 'start' to support running scripts.
• Added a mechanism to add variables to Debian packaging maintainance scripts.
• Thunderbird is no longer installed by default in Whonix ™.
• Beautified the Whonix landing page for Tor Browser v8.0+.
• Implemented use of /usr/lib/helper-scripts/terminal-wrapper rather than hardcoding Konsole.
• Deprecated anon-workstation-extra-applications, anon-workstation-langpack-common and anon-shared-desktop-langpack-kde.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Changed (Qubes-)Whonix default applications from KDE to XFCE.
• Installed magic-wormhole by default as an OnionShare alternative.
• Set mousepad as the default editor for sudoedit.
• Added support for XFCE, thunar and gksudo in Whonix-Gateway.
• Allow multiple flashproxy ports in Whonix firewall.
• Disabled Whonix ™ onion apt sources by default due to unreliability.
• Added a new branch for compression/decompression tools.
• Implemented support for the new Snowflake pluggable transport in Anon-Connection-Wizard.
• Implemented the Tor Controller GUI in Whonix ™ with various fixes.

Security Enhancements

• Removed mapaddress entries in torrc for 1.1.1.1 and 2.2.2.2 due to the fingerprinting risk.
• Run whonixcheck in Whonix-Workstation on first time boot.
• Added a spectre/meltdown test to whonixcheck.
• Enforce connections to deb.debian.org instead of us.debian.org and now use https (SSL/TLS) by default, as well as fixing build --connection onion.
• Implemented optional tb-updater onion mirrors download support.
• Corrected systemd hardening for onion-grater.
• Added systemd sandboxing for sdwdate.
• Enforced tor+http in apt sources lists to make use of apt-transport-tor.
• Disabled uncommon network protocols for improved security.
• Added a Bitcoin Core onion-grater profile.

Non-Qubes-Whonix

Bug Fixes

• Disabled KDE session restoration to prevent VirtualBox error notifications upon boot in either Whonix-Gateway or Whonix-Workstation.
• Start the KDE desktop session login with an empty session / resolve the kdesudo error popup window related to sdwdate-gui.
• Fixed the Whonix-Gateway XFCE / CLI keyboard layout error.
• Fixed a lintian error for sdwdate-gui / missing xml files for specific desktop environments.

Code

• Closed all KDE-related requests and bug fixes following the shift to XFCE. This includes:
  • Change default application to not use kmail.
  • Change KDE theme and KDE mouse theme.
  • Disable the Baloo file indexer.
  • Add /media to desktop icons.
  • Add /media to pinned places in Dolphin.
  • Disable/remove KDE system and network settings.
  • Disable web shortcuts.
  • settings-plasma search/configure search configurations from Whonix-Gateway.
  • Non-Qubes-Whonix KDE plasma 5 fixes.
• Implemented numerous XFCE fixes: Whonix builds, desktop shortcuts, xfce4-terminal, related meta-packages and general fixes.
• Created a configuration file for Whonix XFCE Desktop.
• Updated the check for installed meta packages for Whonix XFCE and Whonix CLI.
• Removed pulseaudio from hardened-desktop-applications-xfce.
• Removed Ristretto from hardened-desktop-applications-xfce.
• Deprecated non-qubes-vm-enhancements-gui.
• Merged whonix-shared-packages-recommended-cli into whonix-shared-packages-dependencies-cli.
• Port to and take ownership of /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml
• Modified whonix-firewall to remove the old IP 192.168.0.10 reference in non-qubes-whonix-gateway.
• Minimized VirtualBox Whonix-Gateway CLI differences with non-qubes-whonix-workstation cli.

Improved Functionality and Usability

• Implemented Whonix for arm64 / Raspberry Pi (RPi).
• Implemented a unified Whonix download rather than separate Whonix-Gateway / Whonix-Workstation downloads.
• Re-enabled hidden files and volume management.
• Whonix Setup Wizard: added instructions on how to change keyboard layout in XFCE.
• Added mupdf and Ristretto to non-qubes-whonix-workstation-xfce.
• Show the pulseaudio plugin by default.
• Increased Whonix-Workstation VRAM in Non-Qubes-Whonix to 2GB to improve performance.

Security Enhancements

• Disabled maximizing of the Tor Browser window when moving to the top of the screen.
• Disabled previews / thumbnails in Thunar for better security.

Qubes-Whonix ™

Bug Fixes

• Corrected Tor Browser in whonix-ws-14 based VMs sometimes blocking JavaScript on first start.
• Qubes templates: removed the broken graphical updater (Apper).
• Resolved the command failure when running qubesctl state.sls qvm.anon-whonix.
• Added missing Whonix tags anon-vm / anon-gateway to user-created, Whonix-based VMs.
• Fixed failure of Whonix-Gateway to respond after an update.
• Corrected an update error caused by an expired release file.
• Corrected a false whonixcheck notification about outdated packages after performing an in-place upgrade.

Builds

• Amended builder.conf so template build commands are not ignored.
• Deprecated Whonix 13.

Code

• Set $tag:anon-vm $anyvm deny in template-whonix-ws.sls.
• Removed the default installation of emacs and vim.
• Modified the Spectre / Meltdown check so it only runs in Qubes R4 and above.

Security Enhancements

• Confirmed Qubes-Whonix TemplateMVs cannot upgrade in timesync-fail-closed mode.
• Confirmed the efficacy of jitterentropy random number generation in Xen.

Footnotes

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