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Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

qubes-os.org

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Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#61

Post by vigilans »

pgaddict wrote: post #52

I'm using Qubes OS as my primary for years - I think I started with the 2.0 release in 2014 (I might have tried/used the 1.0 release, I don't recall.) and I was immediately hooked. I understand the usual story is that the goal is security benefits, and the compartmentalization (or rather the implied inconvenience) is the price for that. But for me the compartmentalization turned out to be a benefit on it's own, and a…

I’m in the same boat.

Love the compartmentalization and being able to route VMs to different network backends and the ability to create ephemeral domains for quick tasks.

Thank you Joanna, Marek, Andrew, and all the wonderful contributors. I couldn’t live without Qubes.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#63

Post by samoit »

irundebian wrote: post #3

Have used it for several months as my daily OS and dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) and bad battery management. Due to software rendering the overall systems perfmance also dropped. So I cannot recommend it for people with high requirements on graphics and battery duration. Besides that it was an interesting and good exp…

I think you do have GPU acceleration in the Dom0 but I do not remember if you can use/install programs on it, it was the "coordinator" dom.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#64

Post by usr1106 »

josephcsible wrote: post #45
dmm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) Around Firefox 92 or 93 the new GPU-based renderer ported from Servo was made default and performance under Qubes became much worse. Unfortunately, it seems applications increasingly assume the presence of video acceleration and don't prioritize software rendering.

Isn't it reasonable for applications to assume that, now that virtually all hardware has it, even super-cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi?

I understand GPUs are a security nightmare. If you want to have some understanding of your security, don't use a GPU.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#65

Post by adastra22 »

josephcsible wrote: post #45
dmm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dropped it because of bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) Around Firefox 92 or 93 the new GPU-based renderer ported from Servo was made default and performance under Qubes became much worse. Unfortunately, it seems applications increasingly assume the presence of video acceleration and don't prioritize software rendering.

Isn't it reasonable for applications to assume that, now that virtually all hardware has it, even super-cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi?

The issue for Qubes is security. GPUs can be used to subvert basically all the otherwise hardware-enforced security protections.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#66

Post by adastra22 »

patrakov wrote: post #48

It does not matter in the real world whether the vendor declares it secure. Did it help anyone pass any kind of security audit? In other words, do auditors recognize it as a valid environment for working with potentially malicious documents, or only as a toy?

Three points:

(1) Qubes is open-source.

(2) Qubes is written and maintained by security professionals.

(3) Most (all?) security audits are worse than useless.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#67

Post by Dalewyn »

kllrnohj wrote: post #58
Dalewyn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>bad graphics performance (only software rendering supported, many frame drops when watching HD videos on YT) It might help if you used a computer with CPU horsepower that actually exists. And in case this sounded facetious, any reasonable CPU from the past 15 years can handle software decoding of high resolution video just fine. This all said however, if you do actually need full use of all hardware resources then b…

> any reasonable CPU from the past 15 years can handle software decoding of high resolution video just fine. 4k VP9 from youtube takes my 5950x around 20-25% CPU usage to handle with hardware acceleration disabled. The fastest consumer CPU available 15 years ago could not handle that. Hell, even CPUs from 10 years ago couldn't do that. Add power & thermal limitations of a laptop CPU? Not a chance. And that's just VP9…

>4k

To be pedantic, OP specified "HD" which is 720p. I gave him benefit of the doubt by saying "high resolution" in my reply, but I think 4K is unreasonable given the provided context. I'd wager 1080p ("Full HD") at most. There's also the question of frame rate, though we can probably safely assume either 29.976 or 59.952 fps since it's Youtube.

As an aside, software decoding performance can vary pretty significantly depending on the codec used for both encoding and decoding. Bit of a history lesson, CoreAVC was infamous for being very easy on the CPU compared to other h.264 decoders like ffmpeg.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#68

Post by dijit »

udev4096 wrote: post #60

We wouldn't have to rely on security by hypervisor if linux had proper security measures, sandboxing and access controls OOTB. Qubes is still far from good although it's slowly getting there

what are you talking about? Of course we do?

We totally forgotten about mandatory access control systems?

AppArmor, SELinux? problem isn’t that they don’t exist; it’s that nobody knows how to use them properly.

You can even minimise the kernel attack surface these days with utilities like gVisor.

people just understand virtual machines easier. It’s easy to understand the isolation it gives and easier to reduce unnecessary potential attack vectors by having minimal images that don’t contain more than necessary.

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#69

Post by udev4096 »

dijit wrote: post #68
udev4096 wrote: post #60

We wouldn't have to rely on security by hypervisor if linux had proper security measures, sandboxing and access controls OOTB. Qubes is still far from good although it's slowly getting there

what are you talking about? Of course we do? We totally forgotten about mandatory access control systems? AppArmor, SELinux? problem isn’t that they don’t exist; it’s that nobody knows how to use them properly. You can even minimise the kernel attack surface these days with utilities like gVisor. people just understand virtual machines easier. It’s easy to understand the isolation it gives and easier to reduce unnece…

"OOTB" is the term you missed. Obviously, there are kernel features such as seccomp and other LSM but it's not easy to properly configure. Even if you do, it usually comes in your way of getting stuff done. Regarding gvisor, it's solid and I've been intending to use it on k3s

Re: Qubes OS: A reasonably secure operating system

#70

Post by flubbergusto »

tasn wrote: post #50

I've always wanted to switch to qubes, but it just feels so constraining. It's safer to never leave the house, but I don't want to live in a self imposed prison. On the other hand, the isolation provided by containers and flatpak is more accessible, but with a much larger attack vector. Maybe we need immutable OS + an audit layer on anything that could allow exploits to persist (bashrc and the likes).

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