Shutting down VM and whonix and security questions?

[ouch787]

Good day and thanks again to all in this forum Ego Patrick and all who help new guys like myself. I have reinstalled the whonix image and got everything working only this time I installed the gufw firewall this time based on the pre-install advice. My question is when we power down the gateway and workstation does it make any difference how we shut down? I have been powering down the machine every time until I tried saving it in its current state and realized that it saved a lot of the time required to boot. Does how we shut down the gateway and WS have any impact on security?

My second question pertains to both the global and user firewall settings in addition to installing the gufw firewall and configuring it as suggested is there any kind of config on the global and user firewall that can further increase security??

Again I apologize for these noob questions and appreciate all that you guys do.

Thanks in advance.

[Ego]

Good day,

regarding your first question, I’m currently not aware of any security issues which may appear when “incorrectly” shutting down your Whonix-session. Most of the time, I simply turn it of over the standard button in KDE, as it is the simplest solution.

Regarding the firewall question, I don’t think so. The point of a firewall would be that you yourself may decide what is safe and necessary, to then block in and out coming traffic which you don’t need.

Have a nice day,

Ego

[Patrick]

The easy answer is “better shutdown”.

Post Install Advice

It's recommended against to pause/suspend/save/hibernate the Whonix-Gateway, because it'll be difficult to restore the clock after resume.

Related:

Security Guide

[hr]

You are confusing what global and user firewall settings are for. “global” includes a comment.

## Please use "/etc/whonix_firewall.d/50_user" for your custom configuration, ## which will override the defaults found here. When Whonix is updated, this ## file may be overwritten.

That’s all.