NOOB: Purpose of a VPN inside Qubes

General Discussion
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I am new to the Qubes OS community, so bear with me with this repetitive question.

What is the purpose of running a VPN inside Qubes? I have a Mullvad VPN that I can use but what would be the reason for one to create a sys-vpn qube?

sys-vpn → sys-whonix → qube?
sys-whonix → sys-vpn → qube?

Any information would be appreciated!

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For general usage? Hard to say. Maybe if you trust the VPN-provider more than your ISP. Then it would make sense. I’m using it the traditional way … to get into my private networks.

whonix dooesn’t “need” VPN.

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Is the question about:

  • should I use a VPN within a qube or should I use a network providing qube with the VPN on it
  • what is the purpose of using a VPN when using Qubes OS?

Answer to the first one: it’s better to have a network providing qube on which you establish the VPN, and then assign it as the netvm of qubes that should use the VPN. It’s more reliable and the VPN can’t be disconnected if a qube is compromised.

For the latter, using a VPN on Qubes OS has the same purpose as on any other OS.

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It’s part of the security design of qubes to compartmentalize instead of having everything on same machine.
It’s also very recommended to have a vpn firewall qube as well to prevent vpn leaks which can easily happen. So if you want a vpn, then you want 2 more sys qubes.

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One example use case is a compartmentalized profile that utilizes geo-blocking circumvention, so any AppVMs based on this profile can use the sys-vpn while other compartmentalized profiles not using the sys-vpn remain unaffected.

See also:

My response:

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