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QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

qubes-os.org

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Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#51

Post by Syonyk »

frugalmail wrote: post #15
flashback2199 wrote: post #7

I really like QubesOS, but you cannot run VMs inside a qube, or other things that require VMs like Docker Desktop for Linux, because the xen hypervisor does not support nested virtualization.

Double whammy, because sadly you can't run it in a VM either. At least that's my experience.

If your hypervisor supports nested virtualization, it should work. It'll probably grumble about the lack of IOMMU and various other things, but you should be able to run it in VMWare or KVM, if you're willing to jump through some hoops.

Not sure why you'd bother, though. If you're already spinning up VMs, just use that capability. Qubes makes "spinning up a ton of VMs on the iron" a lot easier and more usable.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#52

Post by syntaxing »

Whoa is this firefox containers but at an OS level. Can you SSH to each container without using the window environment? I wanted to use something like proxmox but decided not to because my computer was only 4 cores and 4 threads. If I can use this but "dynamically" allocate the CPUs, it would be perfect for my application.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#53

Post by weinzierl »

neodypsis wrote: post #23
weinzierl wrote: post #5

I used it when I worked as a hiring manager. For this task it is ideal. All the behavioral security measures, like only to open attachments from people you trust, break down when your job description is basically to figure out who you can trust. Qubes comes with a "Convert to trusted PDF" out of the box. Joanna Rutkowska explained how it works under the hood pretty nicely[1]. The tldr is that it is very thorough. Wit…

You can use something similar on macOS, Windows or Linux, based on Docker containers, see Dangerzone: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone

I didn't know about that but that looks really nice. From a quick glance I understand that they can even utilize OCR to make the trusted PDF into more than an image container. Back in the day when I used Qubes it could not do that. (I haven't used it for a while so I don't know if it can now)

I still think security-wise Qubes is a bit better because it relies on VMs instead of containers.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#54

Post by Syonyk »

neodypsis wrote: post #23
weinzierl wrote: post #5

I used it when I worked as a hiring manager. For this task it is ideal. All the behavioral security measures, like only to open attachments from people you trust, break down when your job description is basically to figure out who you can trust. Qubes comes with a "Convert to trusted PDF" out of the box. Joanna Rutkowska explained how it works under the hood pretty nicely[1]. The tldr is that it is very thorough. Wit…

You can use something similar on macOS, Windows or Linux, based on Docker containers, see Dangerzone: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone

The problem is that containers rely on the OS kernel to enforce separation, and kernel exploits are an awful lot less rare than anyone would prefer.

If someone is delivering targeted malware to a company through HR channels, it's safe to assume that if they can escape the document viewer, they can probably also try for a local root/kernel exploit and escape the container.

Containers are separation of convenience - not a hard security boundary.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#55

Post by thewataccount »

DeathArrow wrote: post #30

>Qubes OS is a free and open-source, security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing. Qubes OS leverages Xen-based virtualization to allow for the creation and management of isolated compartments called qubes. What's wrong with containers? They are supposed to provide better performance than VMs. Are containers less secure?

The way I recommend thinking about it is containers work as a "convenient precaution" -

"dumb scripts" that just copy files/install something, encrypt files, etc. will be well contained in a container.

"smart scripts" are more rare - but essentially if you're trying to break out of a container you can, container breakout methods are not uncommon. These types of malware are usually more rare.

So if your threat model is "I want to run this program that I'm pretty sure I trust but I'm not 100% certain" then a container is most likely fine as a convenient precaution.

But if it's "I want to make sure nothing can break out (especially if you're running user's code) and compromise the full system" then you want VMs.

With the recent pytorch-nightly compromise in december, AFAIK a container would have protected you, just don't assume that will always be the case.

EDIT: I wish katacontainers was easier to use and was more widely used - I feel like it gives most of the usability benefits of containers with the security of VM's which is what everyone should really want for most things. VM overhead can be pretty small, with under 100ms "boot" time, etc.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#56

Post by flashback2199 »

Syonyk wrote: post #51
frugalmail wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double whammy, because sadly you can't run it in a VM either. At least that's my experience.

If your hypervisor supports nested virtualization, it should work. It'll probably grumble about the lack of IOMMU and various other things, but you should be able to run it in VMWare or KVM, if you're willing to jump through some hoops. Not sure why you'd bother, though. If you're already spinning up VMs, just use that capability. Qubes makes "spinning up a ton of VMs on the iron" a lot easier and more usable.

> Not sure why you'd bother

Because some software expects to run a VM itself such as Docker Desktop which I said in my original comment.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#57

Post by fsflover »

beardog wrote: post #13

I love Qubes a lot, I daily drove it for a few years and still have it on a laptop. but i would not recommend it even to most technical people, mainly because you forfeit the ability to run things on bare metal. "dom0" is the same as on normal xen - it is a VM and has the associated overhead still. On top of that, the official Qubes dom0 runs a very outdated fedora version. I am instead writing my own code to automat…

> the official Qubes dom0 runs a very outdated fedora version

Why does it matter? You do not run anything in dom0: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/supported-releases/#note-on-dom...

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#58

Post by Syonyk »

flashback2199 wrote: post #7

I really like QubesOS, but you cannot run VMs inside a qube, or other things that require VMs like Docker Desktop for Linux, because the xen hypervisor does not support nested virtualization.

You can. It's just neither recommended nor enabled by default.

https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/nested-virtualization/14790

Poke around /etc/libvirt/libxl and your particular VM's config file. You'll find some lines like:

Enable it, and you should have working nested virtualization.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#59

Post by Syonyk »

flashback2199 wrote: post #56
Syonyk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hypervisor supports nested virtualization, it should work. It'll probably grumble about the lack of IOMMU and various other things, but you should be able to run it in VMWare or KVM, if you're willing to jump through some hoops. Not sure why you'd bother, though. If you're already spinning up VMs, just use that capability. Qubes makes "spinning up a ton of VMs on the iron" a lot easier and more usable.

> Not sure why you'd bother Because some software expects to run a VM itself such as Docker Desktop which I said in my original comment.

And if you'll note, under your original comment I added some detail on how to enable nested virtualization in Qubes.

Re: QubesOS – A reasonably secure operating system

#60

Post by Syonyk »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #25

QubesOS is very cool but I've always thought it'd cool/better if it was a patchset or repo on top of an existing distro like Archlinux or NixOS. I think that would be useful so you could adopt features from QubesOS individually and swap out different components. For example, it'd be nice to use KVM (QEMU or even crosvm) instead of Xen or build a Wayland based system instead of X11.

If you have the skills to port the tools to KVM, please do so. There's a shortage of sufficiently paranoid low level sorts with the time and interest in the hacking on Qubes.

Getting it working on ARM is also of interest.

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