MirageOS is a library operating system with which you can create a unikernel for the sole purpose of acting as Qubes OS’s firewall. In this post, I will walk you through how to set this up. Advantages Small attack surface. The unikernel only contains a minimal set of libraries to function, so it has a much smaller attack surface than a general purpose operating system like a Linux distribution or openBSD....
Before We Start… I sent Proton an email regarding this issue in late August 2022 and was told they are working on fixing it, though it will take some time as it requires some architectural changes in how the killswitch works. The Leak Ideally, when implementing a killswitch, a VPN client should drop all connections on non-VPN interfaces except when the connection is to the VPN provider’s servers. This is necessary to prevent accidental leaks, at least by unprivileged applications....
IVPN is a fairly popular and generally trustworthy VPN provider. In this post, I will walk you through how to use the official IVPN client in a ProxyVM on Qubes OS. We will deviate from the official guide by using systemd path to handle DNAT. This will provide the same robustness as their approach to modify /opt/ivpn/etc/firewall.sh, while avoiding the risk that the modifications will be overwritten by a future app update....
Lokinet is an Internet overlay network utilizing onion routing to provide anonymity for its users, similar to Tor network. This post will go over how to set it up on Qubes OS. Before we start… This post should not be considered an endorsement of Lokinet in any shape or form. Lokinet is currently not in a good state — it has not had a public release since 2022, and most free public exit nodes have gone offline....
Mullvad is a fairly popular and generally trustworthy VPN provider. In this post, I will walk you through how to use the official Mullvad client in a ProxyVM on Qubes OS. This method is a lot more convenient than the official guide from Mullvad (which recommends that you manually load in OpenVPN or Wireguard profiles) and will let you seamlessly switch between different location and network setups just as you would on a normal Linux installation....
This post will go over setting up Split GPG, then setting up Split SSH with the same PGP keys. Effectively, we are emulating what you can do with a PGP smartcard on Qubes OS. Split GPG Follow the official Qubes OS documentation to set this up. Note that if you already have a PGP key with a passphrase, you can remove it by installing pinentry-gtk to vault’s TemplateVM, then run gpg2 --edit-key <key_id> and passwd to set an empty passphrase....