I2P patched against de-anonymizing 0-day, Tails integration still to follow

Developers of the I2P anonymous networking tool have released a new version (0.9.14) of the tool that fixes XSS and remote execution vulnerabilities reported by Exodus Intelligence.

The improvement was made in the wake of the revelation that Exodus Intelligence researchers have found a critical de-anonymization 0-day in Tails, the security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution used by privacy-seeking users around the world.

The zero-day affects the I2P component, which has been bundled with Tails since version 0.7.

“The I2P vulnerability works on default, fully patched installation of Tails. No settings or configurations need to be changed for the exploit to work,” the researchers claimed, and vowed to responsibly disclose the vulnerability to the Tails and I2P teams.

“The vulnerability we have found is able to perform remote code execution with a specially crafted payload. This payload can be customized to unmask a user and show the public IP address in which the user connected from within “a couple of seconds’,” they explained.

The I2P team has released the updated version during the weekend, and has urged users to update immediately.

The new version of I2P is yet to incorporated into Tails. Its developers have warned on Friday that users should not start I2P in Tails 1.1 and earlier (it is not started by default), and that they can protect themselves further by removing the I2P package every time they start Tails.