On 2/14/19 10:02 PM, nosugarmaxta...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
Right now I use Qubes for a bit of fun - setting up VPN's - chaining them,
trying to get HVM's up and running, just messing about. I do plan to totally
phase out my other OS's for it, but theres one thing that keeps going through
my mind.. how isolated are the VM's from each other actually?
I know Qubes is 'reasonably' secure, but how secure? Could a whistle blower
have a whonix VM open handling sensitive materials while at the same time have
a personal VM with ISP connection and google/facebook/work sites open, with no
issue at all? If the whistleblower would only be able to use the machine for
sensitive purposes due to leak potentials, etc, wouldn't this make using Qubes
pointless?
Of the myriad remote attacks that can be used against traditional
operating systems, basically one type is thought to be effective against
Qubes in general: Side-channel attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack
The best way to mitigate these is to not run public key crypto in
trusted VMs at the same time untrusted VMs are running (although this
can be a problem when VMs like sys-net and sys-usb are considered).
Also, test your hardware to see if its susceptible to rowhammer.
In contrast, even a physically isolated system can be less secure than a
Qubes system. This is because the devices and drivers used for
interfacing (SD cards, DVDs, USB drives - even occasionally) are much
more complex and vulnerable than the interfaces on a Qubes VM. And if a
Qubes VM does become compromised, chances are much better that the core
system and firmware will remain safe.
https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2014/08/26/physical-separation-vs-software.html
Finally, assuming that attacks will succeed at least occasionally (and
Qubes is built with this assumption for guest VMs): How recoverable is
the situation? A Windows system that had its firmware compromised will
continue to run malware even after the OS is wiped and re-installed. A
Qubes system OTOH probably has intact firmware and malware can be
removed by removing the affected VM.
--
Chris Laprise, tas...@posteo.net
https://github.com/tasket
https://twitter.com/ttaskett
PGP: BEE2 20C5 356E 764A 73EB 4AB3 1DC4 D106 F07F 1886
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to qubes-users@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/5e8f13b0-3ba9-f63c-fb50-974564024bfc%40posteo.net.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
