Exploring the Qubes OS secure operating system

Conclusions

Although the concept behind Qubes OS is not revolutionary – app separation processes have been around for some time – the everyday usability of the system and its excellent flexibility, in combination with the considered device abstraction design, make Qubes OS quite unique.

That said, however, the system is still not suitable for everyone, and it provides limited hardware compatibility. Also – as is to be expected of a beta version – some bugs need to be fixed [11]. But, if none of these caveats faze you, you can look forward to a well-designed and, above all, secure system.

Infos

  1. Predictable RNG: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1571
  2. Secure OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd.org/security.html
  3. "Blue Pill" rootkit: http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2006/06/introducing-blue-pill.html
  4. Qubes OS: http://qubes-os.org
  5. Dom0 updates: http://qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/SoftwareUpdateDom0
  6. Networking with Qubes: http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/09/playing-with-qubes-networking-for-fun.html
  7. Bug rates in software: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/news-at-sei/wattsnew20041.cfm
  8. List of compatible hardware: http://qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/HCL
  9. Qubes on a VM: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/84168-nearbulletproof-qubes-os-goes-beta
  10. Beta 2 of Qubes R2: http://qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/QubesDownloads
  11. Bugs in Qubes OS: http://qubes-os.org/trac/report/3

The Author

Tobias Eggendorfer is a professor for IT security in Ravensburg, and he also works as a freelance IT consultant (http://www.eggendorfer.info). He finds the concept behind Qubes OS interesting enough to investigate it with his students in an upcoming term, while he also looks for creative ways to undermine it.

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