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No Windows Qubes port due to Win API, architecture

posted by Cactus on Saturday February 22 2014, @09:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the get-outta-my-sandbox dept.

CQ writes:

Qubes-OS, the Security-by-Isolation, VM-based operating system, has concluded that a port to the Windows OS line isn't feasible. In this post, the CEO of Inivisble Things Labs outlines what she had hoped to accomplish with the port and her explaination why it was just not meant to be.

This paper [pdf] contains all the technical bits you need to know, and the explanation on why the Windows APIs and system architecture are not appropriate for the task of creating an isolation system. It also has some interesting (if that's your thing) information on the Windows security model.

Does anyone here have any experience with Qubes? Does it make sandboxing easy enough for day to day use?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Sunday February 23 2014, @11:46AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Sunday February 23 2014, @11:46AM (#5152) Journal
    The closest thing to Qubes for Windows (which also predates it, is more mature, and is also available for OS X too) is the Bromium Microvisor. Bromuim was founded by the same people as XenSource and uses the same underlying technology. It lets you run individual IE and MS Office processes in a separate throw-away VM that can write files to some shared space, but has no other state that persists beyond the program's lifetime or can (baring hypervisor bugs) touch the rest of the OS.
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