The ongoing hardware crisis has made it impossible for the most users to even think about getting something affordable. Can something be done about this? Maybe a “Lite” version of Whonix keeping only the bare minimum components while supporting old hardware?
2 Likes
2 Likes
Does that take entire old system in to consideration or just the RAM?
That begs another question. Does Whonix have a detailed minimum system requirement? Info over at whonix-wiki-backup/System_Requirements.mw at master · Whonix/whonix-wiki-backup · GitHub does not point to anything specific except for the technology needed to start a virtual machine. Right?
1 Like
We don’t have anything more specific.
1 Like
From my experience Whonix-Gateway-CLI runs quite well in as little as 384MB of RAM (KVM, swap file enabled). Once in a few days the VM needs to be rebooted due to something else than TOR segfaulting (a leak I presume). Normally ‘free -h’ shows amount of free memory in 90MB to 110MB range.
This allows more RAM for Workstation which obviously needs it. If the web browser is consuming most of mem the following should help for TorBrowser or Firefox:
- set security level to safest (obvious as JavaScript should be disabled by default). For websites which require JS I download TB via Tor Browser Downloader and copy the installation from ‘~/.tb’ to someplace else. That separate install can have its own prefs with JS enabled;
- in ‘about:config’ set ‘fission.enabled=false’ which should reduce number of separate browser processes (massive waste of mem). If it does not ‘fission.webContentIsolationStrategy=0’ should do it.
Note that the second settings somewhat lowers the browser security. Having different processes for different tabs may contain security breach to just one tab if the browser gets exploited. But it may not. Security from running whole OS in VM is way better (as long as the separate VMs are used for visiting dangerous and trusted sites).
1 Like
Using multiple VMs in such a situation is a good idea anyway, but that would be somewhat tricky if low RAM is the issue. Multiple running Whonix-Workstations will use more resources than multiple Tor Browser processes.
It’s also somewhat dangerous to group websites together into “trusted” and “untrusted” groups. If one “trusted” website is compromised, should it be other to leak data from other “trusted” but unrelated sites? Probably not.
This is probably useful and still reasonably secure in some specific edge cases, but I don’t think it’s a good recommendation in general.
1 Like
With low RAM only one of VMs can be running (unless some VMs are severely restricted in memory use i.e. no GUI).
If vulnerability allows only reading of process memory then breach will be confined in multiprocess mode. But fission (and similar multi-process) protections do not guarantee stopping every exploit. At least for TB/FF all browser processes run in the same account. If vulnerability if severe enough that its possible to take over whole browser process (i.e. break out of JS sandbox and execute native code) then whole account under which that process was running is compromised. Including other browser processes. On other hand VM escape exploits are rare. My point is:
VM + TB (fission disabled) > TB (multiprocess) on host
Yes, if one has enough RAM to use TB/FF with defaults it shouldn’t be done.
1 Like
Dont rely on this nonsense concept of “supporting old hardware”, hardware gets old and insecure and lacks needed new security features. So buy new pc each 5-10 years depending how much you gonna spend once you buy the pc, you pay high for features rich pc then it stays longer, you pay less then it stays shorter, simple.
1 Like
Yeah, I got that, my point is that this depends heavily on one’s threat model. If you intend on accessing sensitive, trusted content from within Whonix-Workstation, there is a very high chance the security disadvantages of doing this are problematic enough that it isn’t safe.
1 Like
If the hw support last version of kernel and features but lack of sufficient resources I don’t see a bad idea to create a lite version without applications and daemons services running in the background except the core to have whonix working with all the functionalities available.
A high range pc with good components can be working correctly more than 10 years, supporting last cpu functionalities, if the microarchitecture is the same, it shouldn’t have been major issues.
1 Like
Unlikely in nowadays to see resources issue, but if the CPU gets old and no patches provided anymore (for meltdown, spectre..) from the CPU manufacture (Intel, AMD, IBM..) thats a dead hardware for me. Software can run inside insecure environment, but when we talk about security, working software is not enough for the purpose.
1 Like
I mean, I can buy a new Windows 11 laptop with only 4 GB RAM and 64 GB disk space from Best Buy right now…
1 Like
Yeah but still considered new hardware (assuming still getting microcode updates). Nevertheless, virtualization world needs resources, this is the best minimum resources list:
Future Whonix OS (host) shouldnt differ from it.
1 Like
related from Whonix Project Policies
2 Likes