Topic: Stop telling people that VMs could protect anything (Read 9154 times)

If I may add: and a firewall as well

Yes, and that would be an even better solution if you'd use a second network interface for the VM. Otherwise lots of attacks still can occur through the open ports in the firewall of the host, which has to be open to allow access to the virtual (browsing) machine.
Or do you think it's safe to have the firewall of your host port just forwarding everything except bitcoin traffic to the VM?

You really are one dumb fuck aren't you?

Any retort on the content of his message? Or just more echo-chamber assfuckery?

It protects only in one direction: It protectes the host from the guest. Not the other way around!

But many people here use it the other way around. That does not work, it's just a little obscurity (which you could also have by renaming files).


Little Conclusion:
The title is not "stop using VMs", but "stop telling people that VMs do magic". If you know what you do, you can get some protection with VMs, as some people here do. But if you tell people, they will just install VMs (wasting ressources), and think they are secure, which they are not.
For example you could set up a VM full operating system based full disk encryption. That would protect the system while it is not running. When it is running, there is no more protection from the host. You can use that setup securely if you are fully aware of that facts. But most people just aren't, especially those who just listen to your security advice.

You have the same effect with my Ubuntu user account setup. While the special user is logged out, there is no way to access the private keys. They are encrypted (and never stored anywhere else).
And it has a lot of advantages:
- It is way less a waste of ressouces.
- Login and logout are much faster than booting a VM. (Hibernating a VM would mean to store private information in swap space.) So there is a smaller time window for attackers.
- Even while the special user is logged in there is no way for other user's software to manipulate unless they really crack the operating system. (Opposed to that the VM is run by a user, thus the user's software can do anything with it.)

Whatever happened to the concept of layering your security? If using a VM provides adds some level of isolation between potential malware and the Bitcoin wallet then it would certainly be beneficial to use it as part of an overall solution. You shouldn't discard it just because it is not 100% "impenetrable" (Are you looking for a Maginot Line-type solution?). Other steps can and should be taken to protect the host, other VM's, the local network, etc. You may argue that this is just obscurity, but in the real world throwing an additional roadblock is usually all that it takes to prevent the success of a potential attack.

You can do that. But don't tell people - especially unexperienced users - that this is security.

If we seriously want to get a situation, where most of the users have some security, we have to think about solid ways.

A savings wallet with password-protected private keys can be understood by a lot of users -- even those who don't know much about IT.

We aren't in the 90's any more. Malware today is made from components and individually designed for each target.

Nobody would do that for a spam box, but when they got your bitcoins, it's a total win.

And that means you have to wade through pages and pages of colorful invective -- and throw some back at him -- before he gets around to actually talking about the issue at hand, if he ever does. Theo de Raadt's attitude problem is the #1 reason I don't use OpenBSD.

That said, it's possible to provide reasonable security for virtual machines (for instance the use of SELinux with KVM) though things like VMware don't really provide anything reasonable, especially on Windows.

so how do u refute whats been said throughout this thread that VM's do nothing to block an attack?

i was well aware of your software prior to this but haven't tried it out since you're so new as is the client so my interest was piqued by this thread.

Just want to make sure that no one else does what I've done so that malware will never be written to target my bitcoin.

well, it seems to me the whole premise of this thread is to refute what you've done.

Protection through obscurity is the answer.

http://bitcoinvm.bitcoincommons.org/

When people write trojans, viruses, etc. they largely do it for profit (the good ones anyway).  They deveop their program to go after the the largest market possible.  Most of the people partaking in bitcoin are running it on Windows XP/7 or Mac.  Many are running the core systems (mining operations, information infrastructure) on linux and BSD.

The threat agents will develop the first round of bitcoin specif software focusing on a Windows XP system utilizing a pre-existing attack vector (un-patched SMB or IE zero day vulns).

You must take a risk based aproach to how you hold your btc:

1 - Thrift account (no more than 200usd exposure) - Windows XP with standard bitcoin software.  Password protect your login and make sure your running some decent anti-virus

2 - Easy access large account (no more than 10,000usd of exposure) - VMware image of Ubuntu JeOS with OS based full disk encyption.  Has no services running (if it's running apache you fail) and a stable release of bitcoind.  Connect this only to known trusted nodes when needing to spend coins.

3 - Hard access mother account (all those secret coins generated the first year) - Every possible disk that ever held a private key is suspect.  Almost all of those should have been wiped with random data 5 times.  <-- before doing that account key pairs should be replicated to 3 tpyes of medium (dvdrw, flash drive, usb ext. hd) and each of these medium would be placed at separate bank security deposit boxes.



my 00.02 btc

You seem to be talking about emulators as opposed to VMs. That's even more waste, and emulation software is even more likely to have vulnerabilities than hardware virtualization.

Yes, it would help. I would use a VM that doesn't try to do fancy optimization like using hardware virtualization or x86-to-x86 translation.  A simple, "pure" VM has less opportunities for its programmers to screw up and introduce security holes. Maybe QEmu?

Do as little as possible outside of a VM, and have Bitcoin running either outside all VMs or in a separate VM from your browsing/email/whatever.

Also, see my thread about Qubes: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11837.0;topicseen

Yes. That's what the P2P network is for. It distributes the block chain.

are the block chain files interchangeable btwn OS's like the wallet?

actually, in any rigorous security evaluation, that comes first.

it's put this way:  "who wants to steal or destroy what i want to protect?  and how good are they?"

how much money should one spend to defend the average, small website that sells $10 widgets and takes PayPal?  is the uberhacker of the russian steppes going to give you even a look?  no.  you don't have anything worth his time - so you really don't need to defend against him.

for that website, you need to defend against the average 22 year old hacker living in his parents' basement.  ...a not terribly expensive proposition.

NOT TRUE, a VM can be set up to be completely isolated from the host

That's not the point. It's not security to just say "nobody attacks me".

not really.  i've opened (as an experiment) emails and downloads targeted to windows machines on linux machines.  no effect (although - for example - gmail targeted malware won't care about you OS).  the stuff using java and even python doesn't do much if you don't have those installed.  standard browser lockdown procedures are pretty effective, even on windows machines, given a little forethought.

a while ago, just for giggles, i installed 6 windows VMs, opened them all and networked them together.  i went and found some malware, let it infect them all, and watched it bounce around...