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Notice how that argument starts with the conclusion "In Qubes VMs there is no point in isolating the root account" and proceeds to rationalize it, very poorly,
by effie 6y ago
Notice how that argument starts with the conclusion "In Qubes VMs there is no point in isolating the root account" and proceeds to rationalize it, very poorly, by using some cherry picked examples where that may be true.
OK, an attacker capable to attack the hypervisor when running as root may be often "game over" if it runs as regular user. But that kind of attack is so rare, why is it the base of the argument at all?
Meanwhile your browser/other big SV application/script from Github can become root whenever it wants, or by accident. It can send contents of the whole VM over the Internet to anybody. Or an honest bug in it can destroy your whole VM. This is why the unix privilege separation or even more capable MAC systems exist. Seriously, running untrusted applications with root access is a braindead idea.
- fsflover 6y agoIn Qubes, you typically don't care if your untrusted application compromises the (untrusted) virtual machine. This is the whole point of the virtualization and separating your work into security domains. See also: https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/. Anyway, Qubes team is not against such kinds of isolation: https://qubes-os.discourse.group/t/isolation-within-the-same-domain/2689 https://qubes-os.discourse.group/t/isolation-within-the-same....
- effie 6y ago> In Qubes, you typically don't care if your untrusted application compromises the (untrusted) virtual machine. For that to be true, one would have to run each application in a dedicated VM. A great idea, but Qubes does not recommend that for efficiency reasons. It does pose performance and usability challenges which is why most people do not use it that way. So yes, you do care about applications in single VM not snooping/manipulating each other. Luckily there are standard unix and MAC mechanisms to isolate them.
- fsflover 6y agoYou don't run each application in a dedicated VM, but you have security domains, each of which have equally (un)trusted applications. Also, there are disposable VMs for truly untrusted things.