Tomb/ChangeLog.md
Jaromil 51452e4e6a documentation update for release
long due, was ready in november 2022 and basically left unchanged at
that stage, except the deprecation of veracrypt in the experimental
portable branch, which is not included in the stable release.
2023-09-18 16:04:19 +02:00

13 KiB

Tomb ChangeLog

2.10

Sep 2023

This release adds optional support for Argon2 KDF brute-force protection and introduces support for doas as an alternative to sudo for privilege escalation. It also improves support for BTRFS formatted Tombs, adds zram detection as swap memory, updates documentation and translations and cleans up the script code.

2.9

Jan 2021

This release fixes all bugs introduced by the unfortunate 2.8 release series in 2020 as well introduces support for BTRFS formatted Tombs. The fixes are for password insertion to work on all desktops, as well the fix to a regression when using old Zsh versions. The new feature is activated by the '--filesystem' flag on 'lock' commands. It only supports BTRFS as internal filesystem of a Tomb instead of the default EXT4; resizing works as well to create and send or receive subvolumes and snapshots inside a Tomb. There are also some cleanups, small error handling improvements and no more need for suid actions by 'forge' and 'dig' commands.

2.8.1

Nov 2020

This is a minor bugfix release. It fixes two bugs introduced by the previous release: the release of loopback devices and a typo affecting password insertion in text-only mode. It also provides a cosmetic fix for the output of 'tomb list' that now displays correct sizes. At last, the docker wrapper has been included in extras/ to be shipped in Tomb. The span of CVE-2020-28638 has been assessed with more precision and KNOWN_BUGS updated accordingly.

2.8

Nov 2020

This new release updates the documentation, improves usability and fixes two bugs. A bug has been found (CVE-2020-28638) to corrupt passwords entered using pinentry-curses on desktops using a X11 DISPLAY, the documentation in KNOWN_BUGS outlines how to fix regressions. Another bug has been fixed to prevent mounting tombs that are already opened, a situation leading to potential data loss. Changes mentioned lead to a small internal refactoring and cleanup, leading to a change in the way volumes appear in /dev/mapper. Along the usability improvements are the support of GNUPGHOME environment variable to support non-standard GnuPG home locations as well updated translations and the fact that debug messages are now written to stderr, making it easier to parse stdout.

2.7

Oct 2019

Fixed getent parsing of passwd and notation of conditionals normalised. A few other minor fixes and documentation improvements.

2.6

May 2019

This release adds new features and provides an important fix for usage of Tomb with cryptsetup 2.1 and future versions; it also fixes a whitespace bug in KDF passwords, all fixes are documented in KNOWN_BUGS. A notable new feature is the libsphinx integration for password-authenticated key agreement (PAKE). Another feature is the integration of cloakify to support new cloak/uncloak commands that hide keys inside long text files. Also support for gpg sub-keys has been added and overall gpg asymmetric key protection is improved.

2.5

January 2018

This is mostly a bugfix release, including two internal refactorings. An important change is the re-introduction (since v2.3) of ownership change of all files inside tombs, to facilitate single user usage, which is now default and can be prevented using the '-p' flag on 'open' commands. The first refactoring concerns the test units, now using the 'sharness' framework. The other refactoring concerns 'post-hooks' now renamed to 'exec-hooks' and launched on 'open' and 'close' commands with a defined set of arguments. Another internal change concerns the use of 'findmnt' instead of parsing the output of 'mount -l', which grants compatibility with more recent versions of util-linux. A fix was made to the 'slam' command for a better process detection and the introduction of a new 'ps' command to just list processes using tombs. Another fix was made to support tomb hidden filenames (starting with a dot) without any extension. Some more minor fixes were made to messaging and translations, plus all the documentation is updated.

2.4

April 2017

This release introduces a major new feature with support for asymmetric encryption of Tomb keys using public/private GPG key pairs. It is now possible to protect a Tomb key using a GPG key (which can also be password-less for automations) as well encrypt a Tomb key for multiple recipients (list of GPG ids). Other improvements include: a fix to the 'slam' command with better detection of running programs using 'lsof' (new optional dependency); a fix to 'forge' key creation to really use 512 bits long keys to really trigger usage of AES256; correct support for opening tombs in read-only mode; update of the Tomber python wrapper in extras. Documentation has been updated.

2.3

January 2017

Fix to bug occurring when using ZSh version 5.3 or higher. Fix to inclusion of final newline in keys generated with 2.2, only affecting third-party software. Removed chmod/chown of tombs when open. Enhanced continuous integration script with regression tests with usage of old stable versions of Tomb and shellcheck linting. Improved parser and post-hooks to avoid usage of external binaries (grep and cat) also improving security when decrypting keys. Fix for clean execution via sudo nopasswd. Updated extras/gtomb to latest stable version. Various documentation updates about kdf, using images as keys, deniability and gpg-agent usage. New experimental port to Android platforms in extras.

2.2

December 2015

New Qt5 desktop tray in extras/qt-tray. New Zenity based Gtk interface in extras/gtomb (experimental). Better resizing procedure recovers from failure without starting over with a new dig. Fixes for correct handling of bind-hooks mountpoints containing whitespaces, implying a refactoring of how the mtab is parsed, along with workaround for Debian bugs. Updated all strings to report MiB sizes. Fix to correctly show last time opened. Fix to EUID detection and to installed manpage permissions.

2.1.1

August 2015

Added translations to Italian and Swedish. Minor documentation updates.

2.1

July 2015

All users updating should close their tombs first, then update and reopen them with this new version. However, lacking to do so will not cause any data loss, just an unclean umount of tombs.

This new stable release including several bugfixes to smooth the user experience in various situations. Documentation is reviewed and extended and translations are updated.

More in detail, fixes to: mountpoint removal, language localization, gtk-2 pinentry themeing, udisk2 compatibility (/run/media/$USER mountpoint support), handling of key failures, kdf documentation, swish-e file contents search and encrypted swap detection.

Deniability is improved by allowing any filename to be used for tombs (also without .tomb extension). Code has been overall cleaned up.

2.0.1

December 2014

Fix for usage with GnuPG 1.4.11, a problem affecting long term GNU/Linux distribution releases like Ubuntu 12.04 and Mint 13. Minor messaging fixes.

2.0

November 2014

Tomb goes international: now translated to Russian, French, Spanish and German.

The usability has improved: steganographed images can now be used directly as keys using -k. Tomb now works also across ssh connections: it is possible to pipe cleartext secrets from stdin using -k cleartext but that requires the --unsafe flag.

The security is also improved by avoiding most uses of temporary files. The privilege escalation model has been simplified and sudo is called only when needed. All code has been refactored for readability and integration with zsh features. Signal handlers are now in place, global arrays are used to keep track of temp files. Namespace has been revisioned and corrected, described in HACKING.

1.5.3

June 2014

Various usability fixes and documentation updates. Password changing and key changing procedures have been refactored and dev-mode operation from scripts has been tested against a few new wrappers being developed. A strings file is made available for translators.

1.5.2

February 2014

Removed automatic guessing of key file besides tomb to encourage users to keep tomb and key separated, but also to simplify the code in key retrieval and avoid a bug occurring in the previous version.

1.5.1

February 2014

Fix to stdin piping of keys, which were not correctly processed nor were deleted from volatile memory (tmpfs).

Version is now updated accordingly.

1.5

January 2014

Minor bugfixes to documentation, error handling, support for multiple and encrypted swap partitions and qr code engraving.

This release also includes some minor code refactoring of load_key() and loop mount checks. Also the tray app is updated to gtk-3 and works simply with a tomb name as argument.

Documentation was updated accordingly.

1.4

June 2013

This release fixes an important bug affecting Tomb 1.3.* which breaks backward compatibility with older tombs and invalidates keys created using 1.3 or 1.3.1. For more information about it read the file KNOWN_BUGS.

New features are also included: indexing and search of file contents, engraving of keys into paper printable QRCodes for backup purposes and improvements in key encryption. A setkey command is added to change the key file that is locking a Tomb.

This release restores backward compatibility with tombs created before the 1.3 release series.

1.3.1 (DEPRECATED, see KNOWN_BUGS)

June 2013

Major bugfixes following the recent refactoring.

This release fixes various advanced commands as search/index, KDF key protection against dictionary attacks and steganographic hiding of keys. It provides compatibility across GnuPG 1.4.11 and .12 which broke the decoding of keys. Usage of commandline option is made consistent and full paths are honored.

A new test suite is included and documentation is updated accordingly.

1.3 (DEPRECATED, see KNOWN_BUGS)

May 2013

A refactoring of Tomb's main script internals was made, including a new messaging system, machine parsable output, cleaner code and updated compatibility to Debian 7. A new search feature lets users index and run fast filename searches in their open tombs. Creation of tombs is broken out in three steps (dig, forge and lock).

Source distribution includes experimental add-ons for a python GUI, KDF key encryption and a key "undertaker". Documentation was updated.

1.2

Nov 2011

Includes an Important fix to password parsing for spaces and extended chars, plus a new 'passwd' command to change a key's password. Tomb now checks for swap to avoid its usage (see SWAP section in manpage) and warns the user when the tomb is almost full.

1.1

May 2011

Fixes to mime types, icons and desktop integration.

A new 'list' command provides an overview on all tombs currently open.

Now a tomb cannot be mounted multiple times, the message console has colors and better messages.

Different mount options (like read-only) can also be specified by hand on the commandline.

1.0

March 2011

Clean and stable. Now passwords are handled exclusively using pinentry. Also support for steganography of keys (bury and exhume) was added to the commandline.

Commandline and desktop operations are well separated so that tomb can be used via remote terminal.

A new command 'slam' immediately closes a tomb killing all processes that keep it busy.

0.9.2

February 2011

The tomb-open wizard now correctly guides you through the creation of new tombs and helps when saving the keys on external USB storage devices. The status tray now reliably closes its tomb.

0.9.1

February 2011

Sourcecode cleanup, debugging and testing.

Integrated some feedback after filing Debian's ITP and RFS.

0.9

January 2011

Tomb is now a desktop application following freedesktop standards: it provides a status tray and integrates with file managers.

The main program has been thoroughly tested and many bugs were fixed.

August 2010

The first usable version of Tomb goes public among hacker friends

During the year 2009

Tomb has been extensively tested, perfectioned and documented after being used by its author.

Sometime in 2007

MKNest was refactored to work on the Debian distribution and since then renamed to Tomb. dyne:bolic specific dependencies where removed, keeping Zsh as the shell script it is written with.

Back in 2005

The "nesting" feature of dyne:bolic GNU/Linux lets users encrypt their home in a file, using a shell script and a graphical interface called Taschino.

Taschino included a shell script wrapping cryptsetup to encrypt loopback mounted partitions with the algo AES-256 (cbc-essiv mode): this script was called 'mkNest' and its the ancestor of Tomb.