Encrypted Guest Images[edit]

The greatest security benefit comes from applying full disk encryption on the host because that is the only place where it is most effective. Nevertheless, for the interested reader this section makes recommendations to deal with the following threat model:

• The host is running when an adversary gets access to it, or the host is unencrypted.
• The VM is powered down (otherwise the adversary would already have access to it).

The following security considerations are based on modified quotes by Iszi ^[archive] from the answer posted on security.stackexchange.com ^[archive], which was a user contribution to stackexchange, licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 ^[archive] with attribution required ^[archive].

Full Disk Encryption within the Virtual Machine[edit]

When using FDE within the VM, never save (suspend/pause) the VM machine state, but instead shut it down completely. If this advice is ignored, the saved machine state could be stored outside of the encrypted image. This includes a RAM dump, which contains the encryption key required to decrypt the image. Upon resuming the VM, that stored file is not necessarily securely deleted, since it is virtualizer-specific.

While the VM is running, the host system's sleep, suspend, or hibernate functions should not be used. Similar to the first scenario, these actions leave a RAM dump on disk, but this time it belongs to the host. This also contains sensitive data, such as encryption keys.

Virtual Machine Files in an Encrypted Container[edit]

VM files can also be stored in an encrypted container, such as a LUKS container. Newer and native support for LUKS encryption of disk images is available as of libvirt 2.10 ^[1] The same precautions should be taken as outlined in the previous section, as the risks equally apply.

FDE within the VM, LUKS encrypted containers for VM images, and FDE on the host can all be used independently, or in conjunction. However, increasing the layers of encryption may begin to significantly degrade performance. End modified quote by Iszi.

Other Security Considerations[edit]

Encryption is an area with many pitfalls; consider the following additional risks.

Table: Additional Encryption Risks

Category	Description
Memory Dumps	These are caused by Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) or kernel crashes and can leave unintended traces on the host; see Core Dumps.
Powered-down VMs	After a VM has shutdown, the RAM that previously contained the VM's encryption key might not have been wiped yet. Memory pages belonging to a terminated process do not have their contents wiped (zeroed) until they are about to be used by another process. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Swap	An encrypted swap provides no protection so long as the host is powered up, because the key is still in RAM. Disabling swap requires a special, secure wiping of the existing swap -- it is far safer to have never used swap before.
Virtualizer-specific Issues	KVM: It is not expected that KVM guests could access data from other process' memory pages via memory ballooning [archive], since KVM guests are Linux processes and subject to Linux memory allocation rules. [6] VirtualBox: In the case of VirtualBox, the file could end up in the folder ~/.virtualbox. A definitive answer requires further research. Xen: Memory ballooning in Xen creates privacy concerns because when it is enabled the memory contents of other VMs are exposed. [7]

Open Security Research Questions[edit]

The following questions and configurations require further research:

• With swap and crash dumps disabled, it is unknown whether the virtualizer writes parts of the VM's RAM contents to the disk. TODO: Specifically ask virtualizer vendors about this possibility.
• Potential setup configurations:
  • Theoretically, a fully encrypted operating system (currently: Debian) could be installed inside a VM and Whonix ™ could be built using --target root inside another VM. This is analogous to the physical isolation model, but secure VM settings would be missing (similar to Manually Create Whonix ™ VM Settings).
  • An encryption feature could be added to grml-debootstrap ^{[archive] [8] [9]} and/or the Whonix ™ build script. There was an attempt ^[archive] to do that, but this effort has stalled.
  • cryptsetup-reencrypt ^[archive] could be used, allowing for the shipping of encrypted Whonix ™ images. The master key and the password (potentially blank) would be known to the public at first. Later on, cryptsetup-reencrypt would be used to fix the master key and password, that is, to make the encryption effective.

Conclusion[edit]

The host of security considerations suggest that an unrealistic set of operational rules are required to defend the integrity of a purely encrypted guest image. Use of Full Disk Encryption is recommended instead.

For further information about encrypted images, see How Useful is In-Guest Encryption? ^[archive] Readers interested in running Whonix ™ as a live OS should refer to VM Live Mode and Host Live Mode.

Footnotes[edit]

---

---

	100px
Fosshost	About Advertisements

---

Search engines: YaCy | Qwant | ecosia | MetaGer | peekier | Whonix ™ Wiki

---

Follow:

Support:

Donate:

Priority Support | Investors | Professional Support

Whonix ™ | © ENCRYPTED SUPPORT LP | Freedom Software / Open Source (Why?)

The personal opinions of moderators or contributors to the Whonix ™ project do not represent the project as a whole.