It just sits there, facilitating virtual machines.īut I can’t think of any likely attack vectors. There is no reason why dom0 should EVER be able to connect to (or be reached from) the outside world. The idea of Qubes OS is that you don’t actually do anything meaningful inside “the computer itself”, and that’s one of the things that protects it. I don’t know what you mean by “the computer itself,”
Unless it’s ransomware, then your home directory would be gone…but I’m sure you’d have backups of things like that, or you’d keep those important thing inside other Qubes Even if something DOES get in, chances are, a simple reboot of the Qube will make it disappear. Specifically, it would need to understand that it needs to attack /rw (a Qubes-specific folder) or it will get discarded as soon as the AppVM terminates. It would take a specialized virus to infect an AppVM.
#Best free virtual machine to run qubes windows#
If I’m right in assuming that you’re coming from a Windows background (because generally, Linux users won’t ask this sort of question), let me break it down for you: Hi I’m right in assuming that you’re new to the world of Qubes OS, welcome to the family! This should reverse any virus infections. Since you mentioned Whonix, that uses App VMs, and the best defense is to periodically restart the Whonix gateway and client. Feel free to use your normal antivirus solution there. If you use Standalone VMs, then my previous comments go out the window, and you need to protect them using your usual methods as though they were regular pcs. If you mean Dom0, then viruses shouldn’t have access because you’re not doing work in that VM, and Dom0 doesn’t normally have Internet access. If you’re worried about infecting the Xen hypervisor, then you might want to look into anti-evil-maid systems. I don’t know what you mean by “the computer itself,” but I can’t think of any likely attack vectors.
The Qubes architecture pretty much removes the need for antivirus in most circumstances for the following reasons: