Today’s release of SecureDrop Workstation 1.6.1 enables administrators to manually perform the in-place upgrade to Qubes 4.3.

Qubes 4.3 comes with a number of new features that will improve journalists’ speed and security when processing submissions from sources.

What administrators need to know

Our migration guide contains the full set of instructions to upgrade to Qubes 4.3.

Unlike previous Qubes OS upgrades, this process will be simpler, as a full reinstall is not necessary. The process will take approximately 4-6 hours and requires making a full backup of the SecureDrop Workstation laptop. You should budget additional time for any issues that may come up during the upgrade.

Administrators must complete the upgrade before Qubes OS 4.2 reaches end-of-life on June 21. Failing to do so will result in a nonfunctioning Workstation that must be manually reinstalled.

If you have any questions about the upgrade process, would like guidance with the upgrade, or encounter any problems along the way, please contact SecureDrop support via Signal.

Furthermore, if you have any additional software (such as Signal or Dangerzone), or any configurations beyond a standard SecureDrop Workstation installation, the upgrade process will be more complex and may require additional steps. Please contact us via Signal so we can advise.

Acknowledgments

This release incorporates Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) contributions by Giulio B; Martin C; Nathan Dyer, communications manager; Micah Lee; Kunal Mehta; Cory Francis Myers; Vicki Niu; Kevin O’Gorman, deputy release manager; Francisco Rocha, release manager; Conor Schaefer; John Skinner; and Rowen S.

Questions and comments

If you have questions or comments regarding this release, please contact us:

• Via Signal, either in your dedicated SecureDrop Support group, or by contacting the support account listed at securedrop.org/help/.
• Via securedrop@freedom.press (PGP encrypted) for sensitive security issues (please use judiciously), or submit a report via Bugcrowd.

We also encourage you to file nonsensitive issues via our GitHub repository.

Thank you for using SecureDrop!