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Qubes OS uses the Linux kernel. Without wanting to start a flame-war and with all respect to Linux, it’s not even close. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open
by nelsonic 5mo ago
Qubes OS uses the Linux kernel.
Without wanting to start a flame-war and with all respect to Linux, it’s not even close. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD_security_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD_security_features
- tptacek 5mo agohttps://isopenbsdsecu.re/ https://isopenbsdsecu.re/ (This site is extremely good and has fairly recent coverage, point-by-point, of all OpenBSD's mitigations. An important subtext to take to this is that OpenBSD has a reputation for introducing mitigations that exploit developers make fun of. Some of them are great, some of them less so.)
- terry_hc 5mo agoThe slides are over 6 years old. The developers' attitudes haven't changed much, but are all of the arguments still valid? I've followed this discussion here and there over the years and it always goes like this: 1) everyone makes fun of the mitigations 2) many even outright assert they can easily defeat and exploit OpenBSD 3) nobody provides a working PoC when asked to demonstrate how insecure the OS is And somewhere in the mix there's also you and your usual blabber, also without any substantial examples of how insecure and exploitable the OS is. Always.
- tptacek 5mo agoThe site isn't the slide deck. Let's talk after you've read it?
- terry_hc 5mo agoI have now read all of the points in the mitigations section. Just like the slides, the commentaries to the mitigations willingly assert uselessness and imply a sense of absolute insecurity, but without specific or even general examples. So I'm looking forward to your careful explanation of how insecure the whole thing is and how easily it can be dismantled. Because I really want and need to know. Let's talk.
- snazz 5mo agoThe “kernel” in Qubes is arguably Xen rather than Linux, and that’s where the security boundaries are supposed to be defined rather than within VMs that may be running any OS. VM compartmentalization as a security mechanism is hard to compare to a more conventional Unix like OpenBSD.
- fsflover 5mo agoIt's not just Xen, it also relies on the hardware-assisted virtualization (VT-d), which is virtually unbreakable compared to anything else. Most Xen vulnerabilities do not even affect Qubes: https://www.qubes-os.org/security/xsa/#statistics https://www.qubes-os.org/security/xsa/#statistics
- fsflover 5mo agoYou misunderstand the Qubes' approach to security. You isolate your workflows into separate VMs, so that security of a single VM doesn't matter. For example, my secrets are stored in a dedicated offline VM. All kernel bugs in it are just not exploitable. I open my online banking in a dedicated VM, in which nothing else is ever opened. Which attack vector do you think can be used against that?