Qubes Air: Generalizing the Qubes Architecture

https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2018/01/22/qubes-air/

183 65 8 years ago

mirimir3• 8 years ago

This is interesting. However, I don't get how stuff in the cloud can be considered secure. Unless you trust them, anyway. And also, I'm reminded how little privacy seems to matter for Qubes devs.

Edit: OK, I take it back. Replacing VMs with discrete devices on local networks is very cool. I just wish that they'd emphasized that, and then talked about using cloud resources. Indeed, what boggled my mind is that someone would go through the hassle of learning Qubes, and then put some of it in the cloud.

ecesena5• 8 years ago

Uh!? What’s the issue with privacy? Qubes is great to make sure you don’t get a malware while you watch “youtube”, and this malware gets access to your bank account. I feel privacy is kind of out of scope here, not that you don’t need it, but you can plug it in with ease. There’s nothing in qubes design that prevents privacy.

Cloud is just a way to distribute computation, and make sure storage is always available to you. Everything should be assumed to be protected — I mean, they protect video memory among processes/apps, you’d bet they protect your data on the cloud.

jimktrains2• 8 years ago

That's all assumptions thought. I'm assuming they're protecting stuff. I'm assuming they're not looking at stuff. I'm assuming their underlying systems are patched. It's just assumptions that they're doing the right thing.

mirimir3• 8 years ago

There is currently no way to keep cloud stuff private. Maybe one day homomorphic encryption will be usable. And without that, the cloud provider can see everything. You can, of course, encrypt stuff locally first. But that's only good for static data.

xelxebar• 8 years ago

The cloud stuff seems incidental to the article's main point. At least that's how I read it.

Rather, it sounds like they are trying to properly abstract the isolation technology away from any specific implementation. They then realized that this would also allow "Qubes on the Cloud" with relatively little extra effort.

From a personal choice standpoint, it seems we will still have the option of avoiding cloud zones completely if we so desire, so no harm there.

If we think about the sociology of security however, lowering the barrier to entry seems like an overall win, assuming we believe in the Qubes security model.

It's a lot like fingerprint readers on phones. Sure, they're not near as strong as a high entropy password, but they're convenient enough so people who previously never locked their phones now use a fingerprint lock.

conradev• 8 years ago

I agree. I liked the diagram that showed separate machines on the same local network running qubes. Physical separation is stronger compartmentalization than Xen.

robryk• 8 years ago

You can put the untrusted VMs in the cloud, to get better isolation between them and more important stuff. This, e.g., is a way of preventing two colluding VMs from communicating.

masklinn• 8 years ago

That's a very interesting take, you can run local network for trusted qubes and put more risky/untrusted qubes on "cloud" VMs, that way you strongly mitigate colluding VMs (same-machine & same-network) and VM excursion attacks on your hypervisors & physical machines.

ecesena5• 8 years ago

Qubes would make for a great startup and, given the time, prob a very successful ICO.

I was positively and at the same time negatively surprised reading about the 30k users. All issues/obstacles reported don’t seem so unachievable if one can imagine to focus on one specific hardware platform and with a good marketing team. I understand this is beyond a research project, but it would make for a great startup.

tlrobinson• 8 years ago

Why would Qubes do an ICO?

ecesena5• 8 years ago

For the cloud, it would be an incentive to run the nodes, and you’d pay for the resource you’re using. I’m not saying they should, Im saying it could be a good startup or, in this case, a good model for a blockchain-based company.

mtgx• 8 years ago

To start, only because it's the best model to fund an open source project, ever?

Of course they'd also have to pick their launch during a bull market, because nobody cares about ICOs in a bear market. If there's one innovation the "blockchain" has brought, is extreme liquidity and high funding potential for any type of startup, including open source projects that wouldn't even be considered by VCs ever, or they'd have to beg for individual donations otherwise.

The blockchain is a P2P Silicon Valley (you heard it hear first).

cyberpunk0• 8 years ago

At the same time I don't want such a project anywhere near shady investors and founders seeking bro get rich and destroy the company like most start ups

xvilka• 8 years ago

Wonder about their progress of integration[1] with ReactOS.

[1] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2809

jeditobe• 8 years ago

Me too

secfirstmd• 8 years ago

That would be amazing...especially for helping transition people who feel uncomfortable with Linux type environments.

adultSwim• 8 years ago

I think the Qubes team desperately needs more funding. Give them some of your money. Tell them your priorities.

Qubes + Whonix has been an enormously tremendous success.

I'm so happy to have Qubes as my daily driver at home. However, because of so little money coming in, development seems much more limited than it could otherwise be.

It's a wonder what they've been able to do so far with no budget and few external developers contributing.

weinzierl• 8 years ago

I‘m a heavy user of Qubes OS. The “Convert to Tusted PDF” feature is something I use almost daily.

My use case is examining, cleaning and possibly distributing application letters and CVs. If you have to read job application letters, the advice to just open files from people you trust, just doesn’t work. The amount of untargeted malware we receive through this channel is considerable. We had targeted attacks too.

I’ve known about Qubes OS for a long time but interestingly the advice to use it for all processing of application letters didn’t come from my tech circles but from a recruiter.

Given the strict laws about data retention in my jurisdiction (Germany) a cloud solution (short of homomorphic encryption) probably isn’t going to work for me. The idea of using discrete devices sounds interesting though.

viraptor• 8 years ago

Have you considered a jailed pdf reader application instead? I'm curious what the decision factors were important for you.

blattimwind5• 8 years ago

So everyone downstream of weinzierl has to be aware that (1) the PDFs he hands them may be full of malware (2) have to use VMs (3) must open said malware-packed PDFs in a disposable VM (4) must strictly adhere to D-VM usage protocol.

slaymaker1907• 8 years ago

I think the cloud aspect is also quite interesting in the potential for a much cheaper remote desktop. Most applications don't require a beefy CPU, so just run them on something cheap and then just run anything demanding on a more powerful node.

kakarot8• 8 years ago

This was an awesome read. These guys are doing some of the most groundbreaking work in computing right now.

The idea of having an "operating system" made up of components dispersed across the globe seems like a fantasy that is too good to be true.

If Qubes can finally provide a method for passing through NVIDIA GPUs with this kind of architecture, Xen or not, that would be incredible. It's the only reason I had to leave Qubes.

hawski• 8 years ago

It did not help Plan 9 to conquer the world.

I found a good introduction to Plan 9 architecture in this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989697#15990077

eptcyka• 8 years ago

Passing through GPUs is problematic, as it's a massive attack surface.

effie2• 8 years ago

Could you elaborate on the 'massive'? Let's say you let the VM see the GPU. What kind of attack would that enable? Let's suppose that a virus inside VM manipulates GPU outside of what applications are allowed to do. What worst thing could happen?

kakarot8• 8 years ago

It's unavoidable for me.

It provides no drawback for users who don't utilize it, and the alternative is me remaining with KVM which is a vastly larger attack surface, so your argument defeats itself.

Cthulhu_• 8 years ago

Why would you want something like that though? What are the benefits that are worth the huge amount of overhead of having to pass through the internet to connect components?

I mean I get cloud computing and such, but this seems to be aimed as a consumer OS, which is very sensitive to delays and whatnot.

rectang• 8 years ago

One reason: the prospect of an endless stream of unpatchable Spectre-like hardware vulnerabilities.

The "real problem" exposed by Meltdown and Spectre is running untrusted software on the same hardware where sensitive information resides. Moving away from physical coupling defends against potential sidechannel attacks.

The Qubes approach of "careful decomposition of various workflows, devices, apps across securely compartmentalized containers" seems to point a way forward after this sobering assessment:

http://robert.ocallahan.org/2018/01/long-term-consequences-o...

kakarot8• 8 years ago

Qubes aims to provide both consumer and enterprise workflows, and everything in between. People use computers for all sorts of things. A full Qubes system delivered to a tablet/phone interface is also a fine tradeoff for millisecond GUI delays.

pikchurn• 8 years ago

The idea of having an "operating system" made up of components dispersed across the globe seems like a fantasy that is too good to be true.

Read up on Amoeba and Sprite in the 80's.

qplex• 8 years ago

Qubes runs mostly on computers with Intel CPUs.

It's good of them to admit that the layers-upon-layers approach just doesn't bring in any additional security if you have buggy/unsecure hardware.

jstewartmobile• 8 years ago

Amen. Huge silver lining to Meltdown has been raised awareness over what a mess our hardware is.

As long as we're in Intel x86 land, the Plan 9 service-per-box approach is probably about the best we can do, and I'm not saying that with any joy, or as an endorsement.

Or, perhaps we can claw our way back to the 1960s and reclaim working memory protection? As obvious as that sounds, I wouldn't take it for granted. People already accept all sorts of half-broken proprietary bullshit for GPU performance, bootloading, AMT, etc. From the mailing lists, looks like Intel is trying to normalize that for CPUs as well.

transpute• 8 years ago

With the Qubes Air architecture, the unpopular Intel ME/AMT could be repurposed as a VNC server for web browsing on a dedicated device, e.g. old laptop. The AMT VNC client could be run in a thin Qubes VM. This would isolate the web browser (main x86 CPU), VNC server (Intel ME cpu) and VNC client (Qubes device CPU) on three physical processors. Usability would depend on performance of the AMT VNC server.

Qubes Air: Generalizing the Qubes Architecture

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