Open source OS Qubes available for alpha testing
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 08 April 2010, 19:14 IST
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Bangalore: Joanna Rutkowska, had used her expertise four years ago to virtualized a rootkit and had created a malware called Blue Pill. Now, she has come up with a secure open source operating system called Qubes OS that is available for alpha-testing downloads. Qubes OS employs Xen virtual machines (VM) as building blocks in which users organize groups of applications. These Linux-based VMs are managed on a single piece of hardware managed by a Xen hypervisor, keeping applications used at work, for example, separate from applications used at home, according to Tim Greene of Network World. This is how malware protection works on Qubes. If one VM is set up for Web browsing and during a visit to an infected site a worm gets downloaded, the worm cannot access the other VMs on the same piece of hardware. It is isolated and the applications located on the other VMs continue to work unencumbered. The primary task of Qubes OS is to isolate VMs from each other. The operating system itself creates a set of VMs such as the network VM and storage VM. The network VM, for instance, isolates networking code in the device from all the other applications on the hardware. If the network VM is compromised the device becomes unable to network and is isolated, but the rest of the code on the machine remains intact. Rutkowska says in her blog that her firm, Invisible Things, has been working on Qubes OS for the past six months and just announced its availability. She says she uses Qubes OS on a Mac Book for work, shopping, banking, browsing and for developing Qubes.

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