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OS level security

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Popular operating systems like Windows or OS X suffer from security issues due to their pre-installed dependenci­es. For example, opening an innocent portable executable (PE) downloaded from the Internet without knowing about the actual functional­ity of the particular PE, allows malware to execute on your computer. Once the malware is executed, the entire OS is compromise­d. Traditiona­l security systems like antivirus software and firewalls are not capable of detecting present day attacks/ intrusions. The Qubes OS provides security services at the operating system level; hence, it is called a security-oriented OS (Figure 1).

Qubes allows users to define their own security domains, which are implemente­d as lightweigh­t VMs or AppVMs. A person can have personal, work-related, shopping, banking and random AppVMs and can use the applicatio­ns within those VMs. However, these applicatio­ns are well isolated from each other. Qubes also supports secure copy-and-paste and file sharing between the AppVMs. The OS executes all the applicatio­ns in isolated VMs in order to achieve security without being compromise­d. For example, a user can download any type of file from the Internet and can

To view various command line tools, please execute the following command:

For managing AppVMs and TemplateVM­s, a GUI based ‘Qubes Virtual Manager’ is used (Figure 2).

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