Posts

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Whonix-14 available in Qubes-OS

As advertised in qubes-users mailing list, the templates of whonix version 14 is now available and flawlessly installed on my Qubes 4.0, without much effort.

I had no issues, so after deleting all existing whonix templates and AppVM‘s, the steps to follow were:

sudo dnf remove qubes-template-whonix-ws

sudo dnf remove qubes-template-whonix-gw

sudo qubesctl state.sls qvm.anon-whonix

sudo qubesctl state.sls qvm.whonix-ws-dvm

And then use Chris Laprise’s script to update them:

./qubes4-multi-update whonix-gw-14 whonix-ws-14

I rarely use whonix, but nonetheless, I encourage anyone using it for good, to donate, supporting the project.

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Adding a newer AppVM template to the Disposable VM on Qubes 4.0

After installing Qubes 4.0, I’ve not actually used disposable vm’s as much as I should, but after Micah Lee showed me the Thunderbird plugin, I had to make a newer disp-vm template, than the old fedora-26 without libreoffice. Can’t open word documents without it, I’m afraid.

In Dom0:

qvm-prefs –set <AppVM to use as template> template_for_dispvms True

I have a personal-28 template to use for newer stuff, so that’s what I will use instead.

See the “Default DispVM “is changed from fedora-26 to Personal-28.
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Kali on Qubes 4 (with katoolin)

To use the great benefits derived from Qubes VM’s, Micah Lee recommended the use of Katoolin, instead of HVM based Kali, I normally use, so let’s try it out:

Clone your fully updated debian-9:

In the “Basic” tab, resize the partition:

Enhance the memory size, if your setup allows it:

Start the terminal to run the commands described on the Qubes Katoolin setup page point 1-6:

When you come to point #6, and have to run

“sudo apt-get dist-upgrade”, don’t…..

I have tried both yes and no to “restarting services automatically”, but the terminal crashes and remains unresponsive. i cannot get in contact with the VM. The latest screenshot was:

It seems the install is running, since my fan speeds up and down continuously.

I tried following this tutorial, and found out that you can install some stuff from the menus, but you have to remove the sources before updating or it will crash. That means no software from Kali will be updated?

For now, I’m continuing to work with my Kali rolling standalone HVM.

10.137.0.23,255.0.0.0,10.137.0.6,10.139.1.1,10.139.1.2

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Basic hardening Apache 2.4.6 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.5 (Maipo)

Notes to self:

Installing packages and EPEL:

rpm -ivh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
yum -y install php php-gd php-mbstring httpd mod_security mod_evasive mod_ssl mariadb-server mariadb
sudo systemctl start httpd.service
sudo systemctl enable httpd.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Edit httpd.conf or .htaccess file to avoid hidden directories to be shown and redirect to https:

#avoid hidden directories to be shown
RedirectMatch 404 (?i)/\..+

#Redirect http to https
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

harden /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and php.ini

sed -i -e 's/expose_php = On/expose_php = Off/' /etc/php.ini
ServerTokens Prod
ServerSignature Off
TraceEnable Off
FileEtag None
Header always unset X-Powered-By
Timeout 45

Options -Indexes -Includes

add services to the firewall:

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http --permanent
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=https --permanent

edit  /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ...
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile      /path/to/signed_certificate_followed_by_intermediate_certs
    SSLCertificateKeyFile   /path/to/private/key

    # Uncomment the following directive when using client certificate authentication
    #SSLCACertificateFile    /path/to/ca_certs_for_client_authentication


    # HSTS (mod_headers is required) (15768000 seconds = 6 months)
    Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000"
    ...
</VirtualHost>

# modern configuration, tweak to your needs
SSLProtocol             all -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1
SSLCipherSuite          ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256
SSLHonorCipherOrder     on
SSLCompression          off


# OCSP Stapling, only in httpd 2.3.3 and later
SSLUseStapling          on
SSLStaplingResponderTimeout 5
SSLStaplingReturnResponderErrors off
SSLStaplingCache        shmcb:/var/run/ocsp(128000

sudo systemctl start httpd.service
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Donate to the Qubes-OS project

Howdy,

I just pledged $5, monthly to the Qubes-OS project:

You should absolutely do the same. Every little bit helps:

My first was KeepassXC:

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Qubes 3.2 fedora-26 large icons and large fonts on Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro high resolution laptop

After updating my qubes installation, my fedora-26 acts up, with huge icons, possibly due to the extreme resolution of my Lenovo Yoga Pro 2.

To fix this install gnome-tweak-tool, and resize fonts and windows to something else and return back again. That will fix it.

First installation with huge fonts:

Resize fonts:

Resize windows:

Select quit and you’re done.

Looking beautiful again:

Fedora-27 didn’t have this problem, but is slow as hell compared to fedora-26, so guessing tweaking is required.

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Update entire qubes installation with a script

Thank to Chris Laprise I have now a great update script for my Qubes installation.

I know it’s bad habit to pollute dom0, but I looked distrustfully 😉 through the code and it seems efficient and not in any way harmful.

First we get with git 😉

If you are like me, you don’t want your template to have git, but only install it every time you need it ;), do the following and fedora-26 is polite and helps you out:

In appVM/dispVM, etc.

  • git clone https://github.com/tasket/Qubes-scripts.git

For now we only need the 1 script:

In dom0:

  • qvm-run --pass-io <src-vm> 'cat /path/to/file_in_src_domain' > /path/to/file_name_in_dom0

Now we have it in dom0:

We can try it out on a fedora-26 template:

in  dom0:

  • ./qubes4-multi-update -l fedora-26

Boom, already updated, but you get the picture.

The following command updates only templates with available updates. That should suffice for generic usage.

  • ./qubes-multi-update -a -l -t

I found a small error when running an update on whonix-ws, but otherwise it runs beautifully.

UPDATE 2018-05-04:

When using Qubes 3.2 running the above command includes the standalone VM’s. Just so you know.

UPDATE 2018-12-28:

Chris has updated the script (ref: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-users/YKAp0_1MFfk/mTyQTM9JEgAJ)

Now I use with unattended and everything just rolls through, nicely:

  • ./qubes-multi-update -a -l -t -u
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KeePassXC on Qubes

Until 1Password takes the Linux community seriously, KeepassXC is the preferred choice for me.

1Password offer a cloud based solution with only chrome-integration, almost like KeePassXC has for Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi and Chromium, but Chrome wont be my preferred choice just yet. And also since Cloud solutions has a broader attack vector, there is no need to put the crown jewels on display, when sensitive hacks are almost happening daily on the internet.

If I get a trojan on my active computer, or buy a chinese keyboard, AND have my password database in the cloud, they can login and download it and harvest all my precious passwords without effort and without any fancy cracking efforts. Therefore if you enjoy cloud services, you might consider to use MFA to access the cloud (and hope your 2nd factor device is not pwned too 😉 Remember that SMS might be in clear text through airwaves that anybody might listen to or abuse in other ways.

Keeping an offline password manager is what I feel comfortable with, so that is what my current needs are.

And here, KeePassXC seems to be the best multiplatform solution around. And an important thing to remember is that if you have an offline password manager(or password manager installed in an “air-gapped” VM in Qubes, the risks of breaches are smaller even with bugs in the Password Manager software, since nothing directly enters a VM without network connection. So you need bugs in the underlying OS to get breached. Not impossible, but more rare in hypervisors with an offline vault than a traditional OS without.

Air-gapped VMs are also used as Split-GPG and Bitcoin wallets, so I guess its a bit more secure. Enhance your setup with a copy of your database on a PIN-enabled secure USB and sync it to your vault VM regularly.

P.S. Yubikey supports KeePassXC, but not as traditional 2FA

In Fedora 27 and later a newer and better version of KeePassXC is available. Remember to enable recommended security settings:

sudo yum install keepassxc

– Database settings – encryption – Argon2.

– General – Basic settings – Automatically save after every change.

– lock the database after use (time, immediately, etc)

If you use Qubes, you can have the password manager in the “vault” VM and ctrl-c, ctrl-shift-c in the vaultVM and ctrl-shift-v and ctrl-v in the destination VM to feel safer. You can also have a secure password file in vault and a less secure in another vm with internet access.

If safety is not the biggest issue for you and you use multiple computers, then install firefox addon, dropbox and sync selectively :

In Firefox addon:

yum install dropbox.rpm (otherwise dependencies are left out)

Point your KeePassXC to the synced folder .kdbx file.

Enable 2factor authentication to dropbox to prevent ease of access for bad people.