Comment by fsflover
5 hours ago
> No, that's simply not the case.
You keep repeating this without providing any actual statistics. I provided statistics about Qubes vulnerabilities, https://www.qubes-os.org/security/xsa/. Show me the numbers please.
> anything in the disposable VM would be at risk.
This just shows that you don't understand the security approach of Qubes. You do not store anything important in a disposable. You run it specifically for one task of opening something untrusted and then it's destroyed. It's in the name: Disposable. Moreover, nothing prevents you from running Bubblewrap inside Qubes. Then one single VM will be as secure as your whole setup, and in addition, you get reliable isolation.
> Source? I assume they are referring to misconfigurations
You never give any actual reference, only I have to. Here you go: https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap.
> bubblewrap is not a complete, ready-made sandbox with a specific security policy.
> As a result, the level of protection between the sandboxed processes and the host system is entirely determined by the arguments passed to bubblewrap.
> Everything mounted into the sandbox can potentially be used to escalate privileges.
This is not a robust system designed for security first. You can use this to be (much) more secure than otherwise, but it's not a security-oriented design, unlike Qubes.
> Anything in the disposable VM is still at risk.
Which means nothing. Disposable can't store anything, it's destroyed every time you stop it.
> You've said before you don't have a lot of security knowledge and it continues to show.
I see the same about you. You keep repeating some myths about Qubes OS based on misunderstandings of its security approach. I don't have to be a professional in security to understand simple concepts. Qubes is not an OS made for professionals but for users.
> Qubes doesn't offer any more security than having a bunch of different machines to do different tasks on.
Yes, it does: https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#how...
> SEL4, ASOS and CuBit are all more secure than Qubes.
Do I have to trust you on this, or do you have any reasonable reference to security people? You don't even provide your threat model when saying this, which clearly shows how amateur your approach to security is.
> I'm just refuting your preposterous zealotry for it
Relying on professionals in the field is not zealotry. In contrast, you show exactly the latter. I see no references.
> The developers of Qubes would absolutely disagree with your claims.
This is plain false:
https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#wha...
https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#how...
https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#wha...
https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#why...
> You keep repeating this without providing any actual statistics. I provided statistics about Qubes vulnerabilities, https://www.qubes-os.org/security/xsa/. Show me the numbers please.
You can find this yourself. For any software running in the guest OS, you can look up it's security history.
> This just shows that you don't understand the security approach of Qubes. You do not store anything important in a disposable. You run it specifically for one task of opening something untrusted and then it's destroyed. It
I understand it perfectly, but you seem to be missing my point. Yes, the qubes are disposable, but you need to have information in them while you are using them, yes? So, you make a new qubes to do your taxes, your tax information is in the qubes because you need it to do that. While the qube is running, if it is vulnerable, then that information is at risk. I get that it is no longer at risk once the qube is destroyed, but that is irrelevant to my point.
Consider an example, back in 2024 if you were running SSH in a Qubes for some reason, you would likely be vulnerable to the regreSSHion vulnerability. Sure, an attacker could only access what was on the disposable VM, but that could still be a lot.
> You never give any actual reference, only I have to. Here you go: https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap.
This source doesn't support your claim.
> This is not a robust system designed for security first. You can use this to be (much) more secure than otherwise, but it's not a security-oriented design, unlike Qubes.
Neither is qubes. It's designed for specific use cases, and doesn't do much to protect the information running within a qube aside from destroying it after disposing of it.
> Which means nothing. Disposable can't store anything, it's destroyed every time you stop it.
It's at risk while the VM is running, which is the point.
> Yes, it does: https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/faq.html#how...
No, it doesn't. Those points are rather nonsense. Malware that can bridge airgapped systems? Sure, if you have a compromised USB stick and stupidly run something from it, I guess. The disposable VM would be at risk also.
> Do I have to trust you on this, or do you have any reasonable reference to security people? You don't even provide your threat model when saying this, which clearly shows how amateur your approach to security is.
You have no security knowledge at all, though, you just repeat your chosen solution because it's FLOSS. It makes this discussion very frustrating. Do you understand anything about capabilities, mandatory access controls or formal verification?
> Relying on professionals in the field is not zealotry.
You are exaggerating claims you can't backup in a field you don't understand due to the software meeting your only real criteria, being FLOSS. That is absolutely zealotry.
> This is plain false:
Not only do your links not support your exaggerated claims at all, meaning I am correct the author would absolutely not agree with you, but the FAQ entry dismissing formal verification and safe languages refers to a paper from 2010 - back when Rust didn't even exist. You might not know this, but the tech world moves pretty fast...
Do me a favor, spend some time with your favorite FLOSS AI and ask it why SEL4 would be considered superior to Qubes from a security perspective.