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Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

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Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#11

Post by discordance »

elliotkillick wrote: post #2

Hi, HN! This is a small project I developed for Qubes OS that allows you to spin up new Windows qubes quickly, effortlessly and securely. Hope you don't mind the flamboyant title, but, I truly do believe that the small attack surface of the heavily minified Xen hypervisor, networking stack, GUI virtualization, and much more Qubes OS employs + the Whonix intergration implemented in this project (making it a Windows-Wh…

Awesome work, thanks! Great to see clipboard support with Windows.

Would love to eventually see Windows apps behave like Linux apps on a window level, instead of displaying the whole Windows VM.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#12

Post by elliotkillick »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #10
elliotkillick wrote: post #2

Hi, HN! This is a small project I developed for Qubes OS that allows you to spin up new Windows qubes quickly, effortlessly and securely. Hope you don't mind the flamboyant title, but, I truly do believe that the small attack surface of the heavily minified Xen hypervisor, networking stack, GUI virtualization, and much more Qubes OS employs + the Whonix intergration implemented in this project (making it a Windows-Wh…

This is really cool, starred right try out at a later date. Question: what does GUI virtualization actually mean? Does that mean the OS runs windowed in your existing DE? I’m guessing that means no HW acceleration. Is it possible to selectively pass through the GPU for a KVM-esque experience?

By GUI virtualization, I was referring to the way Qubes handles receiving graphical updates (e.g. windows) from the VM and sending events (e.g. mouse clicks) to the VM. The Qubes GUI protocol is like VNC or RDP but much, much more secure: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/gui/

No HW acceleration by default as of now. It's possible to passthrough a GPU to the Windows VM in order to get acceleration, although, you risk exposing complex hardware directly to the VM which comes with many security implications: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/device-handling-security/#pci-s...

Note that in practice, passthrough works best with AMD GPUs; I've heard few reports of success with Nvidia GPUs.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#13

Post by elliotkillick »

discordance wrote: post #11
elliotkillick wrote: post #2

Hi, HN! This is a small project I developed for Qubes OS that allows you to spin up new Windows qubes quickly, effortlessly and securely. Hope you don't mind the flamboyant title, but, I truly do believe that the small attack surface of the heavily minified Xen hypervisor, networking stack, GUI virtualization, and much more Qubes OS employs + the Whonix intergration implemented in this project (making it a Windows-Wh…

Awesome work, thanks! Great to see clipboard support with Windows. Would love to eventually see Windows apps behave like Linux apps on a window level, instead of displaying the whole Windows VM.

My pleasure!

That feature is currently in the works (officially speaking) for Windows 10; for Windows 7 it already exists (although it has of course been EOL for some time now).

However, I do recall finding a report of someone successfully using WinApps (https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps) as well as RDP running in a Linux (GNU/Linux) qube to effectively also have Windows applications displayed on a window level. Security-wise it still holds up because that Linux qube, if compromised via the RDP connection, will lead to the disclosure of no additional sensitive information because it's only being used for that single purpose. As long as you have ample RAM to support it, this could work very well.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#14

Post by shadilay »

elliotkillick wrote: post #2

Hi, HN! This is a small project I developed for Qubes OS that allows you to spin up new Windows qubes quickly, effortlessly and securely. Hope you don't mind the flamboyant title, but, I truly do believe that the small attack surface of the heavily minified Xen hypervisor, networking stack, GUI virtualization, and much more Qubes OS employs + the Whonix intergration implemented in this project (making it a Windows-Wh…

I like everything about this. Hopefully hardware support will catch up to the Qubes vision in regards to virtualized GPU resources.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#15

Post by elliotkillick »

shadilay wrote: post #14
elliotkillick wrote: post #2

Hi, HN! This is a small project I developed for Qubes OS that allows you to spin up new Windows qubes quickly, effortlessly and securely. Hope you don't mind the flamboyant title, but, I truly do believe that the small attack surface of the heavily minified Xen hypervisor, networking stack, GUI virtualization, and much more Qubes OS employs + the Whonix intergration implemented in this project (making it a Windows-Wh…

I like everything about this. Hopefully hardware support will catch up to the Qubes vision in regards to virtualized GPU resources.

Thanks!

GPU virtualization is a very difficult thing to do securely, I think VirtualBox said it best in their hardware 3D acceleration documentation (https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/6.0/use...):

"Untrusted guest systems should not be allowed to use the 3D acceleration features of Oracle VM VirtualBox, just as untrusted host software should not be allowed to use 3D acceleration. Drivers for 3D hardware are generally too complex to be made properly secure and any software which is allowed to access them may be able to compromise the operating system running them. In addition, enabling 3D acceleration gives the guest direct access to a large body of additional program code in the Oracle VM VirtualBox host process which it might conceivably be able to use to crash the virtual machine."

It's currently a problem yet to be solved.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#16

Post by Bombthecat »

elliotkillick wrote: post #6
allset_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the hardware compatibility was better. It hasn't worked on my past three laptops.

I'm aware hardware support on Qubes has been problematic for some users. Luckily, it's looking to get a lot better with the up-and-coming Qubes R4.1 (currently on it's first release candidate). It will be shipping with a fully updated base hypervisor and kernel feature set to allow support for newer hardware. I'm not quite sure the specifics of your hardware problem, but, feel free to file a bug on the Qubes issue tr…

Does 3d card passthrough work?

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#17

Post by elliotkillick »

Bombthecat wrote: post #16
elliotkillick wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware hardware support on Qubes has been problematic for some users. Luckily, it's looking to get a lot better with the up-and-coming Qubes R4.1 (currently on it's first release candidate). It will be shipping with a fully updated base hypervisor and kernel feature set to allow support for newer hardware. I'm not quite sure the specifics of your hardware problem, but, feel free to file a bug on the Qubes issue tr…

Does 3d card passthrough work?

If you're referring to GPU passthrough, then yes, in practice much better with AMD cards then Nvidia cards.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#18

Post by shadilay »

elliotkillick wrote: post #15
shadilay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like everything about this. Hopefully hardware support will catch up to the Qubes vision in regards to virtualized GPU resources.

Thanks! GPU virtualization is a very difficult thing to do securely, I think VirtualBox said it best in their hardware 3D acceleration documentation ( https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/6.0/use... ): "Untrusted guest systems should not be allowed to use the 3D acceleration features of Oracle VM VirtualBox, just as untrusted host software should not be allowed to use 3D acceleration. Drivers for 3D h…

You could say the Same about non IOMMU CPU virtualization. The problem here is AMD and Nvidias disgusting greed that has held back security by at least a decade. GPU virtualization (vGPU/MxGPU) is supported but only if you pay ridiculous enterprise licensing. This should be a first class feature like VT-d and would enable a usable Qubes desktop and Microsoft's VBS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPU_virtualization#Mediated_pa...

MS also killed RemoteFX because of security.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#19

Post by shadilay »

elliotkillick wrote: post #17
Bombthecat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does 3d card passthrough work?

If you're referring to GPU passthrough, then yes, in practice much better with AMD cards then Nvidia cards.

Nvidia no longer throws error 43 on new drivers. AMD cards before the 6000 series also have a PCIe reset bug which forces you to reboot the host.

Re: Show HN: Qvm-Create-Windows-Qube: The most secure and private way to run Windows

#20

Post by elliotkillick »

shadilay wrote: post #18
elliotkillick wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! GPU virtualization is a very difficult thing to do securely, I think VirtualBox said it best in their hardware 3D acceleration documentation ( https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/6.0/use... ): "Untrusted guest systems should not be allowed to use the 3D acceleration features of Oracle VM VirtualBox, just as untrusted host software should not be allowed to use 3D acceleration. Drivers for 3D h…

You could say the Same about non IOMMU CPU virtualization. The problem here is AMD and Nvidias disgusting greed that has held back security by at least a decade. GPU virtualization (vGPU/MxGPU) is supported but only if you pay ridiculous enterprise licensing. This should be a first class feature like VT-d and would enable a usable Qubes desktop and Microsoft's VBS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPU_virtualization#Med…

Wow, I was unaware such hardware virtualization extensions currently existed in such mature form for GPUs. Really unfortunate that they've been lost to the avarice of two tech giants which have a duopoly over the GPU market.
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