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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

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