femme Ⓐ Ⓥ 🆓✅Apr 4, 2017

Yikes. https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2017/04/04/qsb-29/

Xen is looking more and more as a liability. Subgraph OS which takes a completely different approach (sandboxing + hardened kernel) has a much better track record with the only vulnerability being dirtycow. Qubes has been affected multiple times due to Xen bugs in recent years: https://www.qubes-os.org/security/xsa/

Show thread\u221e ✅Apr 5, 2017
@femme How does the comparison go when you account for the fact that Subgraph has a much shorter track record?
Show threadfemme Ⓐ Ⓥ 🆓✅Apr 5, 2017
@covalent The first subgraph os alpha was released in march of 2015 and has managed to not be affected by most public linux vulnerabilities (in fact all except dirtycow) as they either require unprivileged namespaces or are thwarted by grsecurity/PaX. Since march of 2015 according to the Qubes Security Bulletins there have been 17 separate issues affecting Qubes and that's not including the issues in the VMs people are running. So it looks really good for the two year old operating system.
Show threadEmanuel BronshteinApr 5, 2017
@femme @covalent is there a list like https://www.qubes-os.org/security/xsa/ that cover Linux vulnerabilities and if they effect Subgraph (if not, why?), also what about future use of Subgraph in qubes?
https://github.com/subgraph/subgraph-os-issues/issues/153
does it better if only Subgraph is used or not?
Show threadfemme Ⓐ Ⓥ 🆓✅

@e3amn2l @covalent I think it's because no one has made a nice webpage because everyone is doing something else to get the next alpha iso out as soon as possible.

It's a tradeoff between Xen bugs and the cool Qubes features like disposable VMs, anti evil maid, etc. But I think just subgraph OS is fine.
I also really like the effort they (Qubes) put into securing and documenting their build infrastructure.

Apr 5, 2017 at 11:55amWeb