[qubes-users] [unofficial] Qubes security advisory

Mailing Lists qubes-users
1

#This email represents my analysis of the events of the last few weeks.
#It does not reflect the views of the Qubes Project or Qubes developers
#in any way.

My Qubes laptop got hacked by Five Eyes because they thought I was a
terrorist, when in fact I was only making clown videos.

That is surely one of the strangest sentences I have ever had to write,
so let me establish my bona fides. I'm a cybersecurity reporter [0],
and have covered cybersecurity and national security since 2013. I have
a masters degree in cybersecurity from Berkeley, and am currently working
on my OSCP. I've been using Qubes as my daily laptop since 2014. I'm not
a Qubes developer, but I would consider myself an advanced user.

I'm also a clown. (I gave a talk at Hackers on Planet Earth this year
called "Cybersecurity and Clown" [1]). In fact, when Covid hit I was in
France studying clown with Philippe Gaulier, the same clown master who
trained Sacha Baron Cohen. I'm a standup comedian and comic actor as well.

So when I made these incredibly silly clown videos [2], I didn't expect to find
myself under intense physical surveillance for several weeks. I mean, intense.
I've been under physical surveillance before for national security reporting
I've done (like this article [3]), but this was the closest I've ever seen the
security services here in Canada swing their elbows.

Knowing that physical surveillance is always accompanied by electronic
surveillance, I kept an eye on my devices. My phone got popped first. Zero-click
iPhone RCE. Two missed calls from a non-existent number right when the physical
surveillance started.

But would they risk a Qubes 0-day to go after me--for being a literal fscking clown?

They did, and per their new "flyswatter policy" left a JTRIG-style goodbye
present when they finally realized I'm just a journalist, and a clown.

One morning last week, I launched a disposable Debian 10 template with my preset
defaults of no netvm and a blank page preset--but instead a default page of
"https://www.youtube.com/" appeared. It only happened once, but it was enough.

Does this rise to the standard of journalist proof I'm accustomed to? Of course
not. Would I risk my reputation by writing this email to the qubes-users list
if I was not confident in my assessment? What do you think?

So why am I writing this message? First, and most importantly, there is clearly
a great Qubes 0-day floating around that needs to be found and squashed. But also,
if Five Eyes are prepared to risk a Qubes 0-day on a clown, who would they *not*
risk it on? There must be dozens, if not hundreds, of active Qubes implants out
there right now.

And this email is meant to burn those implants and make them go dark. If you have
Five Eyes in your threat model, then you need to assume compromise and do whatever
you need to do. Now.

Does this mean I'm going to stop using Qubes? No. Of course not. Qubes is still
our best hope for a reasonably secure laptop. Nothing I've said in this email
changes that big picture analysis.

kind regards,

jmp

p.s. And yo, guys? Cause I know you're reading this. Next time you decide to
dishonor your oath to protect the Constitution, you might read the First
Amendment first.

[0] https://www.jmporup.com/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiaZaPwvz54
[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmE_cQ9Hok0nv7RxYZ_xMJtZb216uvdxi
[3] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/

2

Hi,
Sorry for what happened to you but before stating there "existing clearly a zero day" in default provided Qubes vs my "current customized Qubes seems compromised", further proof/investigation would be needed.

If from what what I read you go to this conclusion because your browser has unexpected homepage, there is so many ways for having a template compromised. I would say to be *really* careful to what to put into a template too. Here I mean mostly third party apps not coming from the underlying distribution. Don't hesitate to create scripts or using salt to recreate customized template and to reinstall template. Even better, don't hesitate to build template directly.

Best,
Frédéric

(Attachment OpenPGP_0x484010B5CDC576E2.asc is missing)

(Attachment OpenPGP_signature is missing)

3

One morning last week, I launched a disposable Debian 10 template with my preset
defaults of no netvm and a blank page preset--but instead a default page of
"https://www.youtube.com/" appeared. It only happened once, but it was enough.

So to clarify, you launched a dispVM with no networking, and a youtube page was loaded and rendered on screen?

That seems highly unlikely to be an accidental input or glitch.

Does this rise to the standard of journalist proof I'm accustomed to? Of course
not. Would I risk my reputation by writing this email to the qubes-users list
if I was not confident in my assessment? What do you think?

So why am I writing this message? First, and most importantly, there is clearly
a great Qubes 0-day floating around that needs to be found and squashed. But also,
if Five Eyes are prepared to risk a Qubes 0-day on a clown, who would they *not*
risk it on? There must be dozens, if not hundreds, of active Qubes implants out
there right now.

Maybe there are other explanations, but you won't know for sure unless you saved the contents of your system in that state.

However, if you're looking for plausible explanations and attack vectors, you should look at side-channels first (I don't think exploiting a side-channel against Qubes would count as a 0-day).

4

No, he's saying the Firefox homepage in his Debian-10 template was changed from about:blank to youtube.com, leading the debian-10 template-based DispVM to launch Firefox with youtube.com as the default page.

Ergo someone compromised his Debian-10 template and changed the Firefox homepage... or, there was an error in the template configuration leading to him accidentally changing the hompeage in what sounds like a stressful situation.

J.M., assuming you are indeed correct about a major attack, most of the major Xen vulnerabilities that threaten a Qubes full compromise involve sys-net. Since Five Eyes may get advance notice of Xen holes, if your machine was indeed fully rooted it could be you were hit by the PCI vulnerability from a while back.

Due to precisely these kinds of issues, there is discussion for using the much-harder-to-exploit OpenBSD as an operating system for the sys-net VM:

You may want to give it a go (after buying a new laptop, of course).

Additionally, if a sys-net based attack is indeed a concern for your threat model, consider disabling wi-fi entirely and using an ethernet cable, wi-fi drivers are generally terrible.

Nevertheless if you are really up against serious Five Eyes type adversaries then it's unlikely you'll be able to keep *any* computer secure for long and should probably buy that cabin in the Rockies you always wanted...

5

I would make a full forensic image and then start investigating. Otherwise the evidence is very fragile.

6

#This email represents my analysis of the events of the last few weeks.
#It does not reflect the views of the Qubes Project or Qubes developers
#in any way.

My Qubes laptop got hacked by Five Eyes because they thought I was a
terrorist, when in fact I was only making clown videos.

That is surely one of the strangest sentences I have ever had to write,
so let me establish my bona fides. I'm a cybersecurity reporter [0],
and have covered cybersecurity and national security since 2013. I have
a masters degree in cybersecurity from Berkeley, and am currently working
on my OSCP. I've been using Qubes as my daily laptop since 2014. I'm not
a Qubes developer, but I would consider myself an advanced user.

I'm also a clown. (I gave a talk at Hackers on Planet Earth this year
called "Cybersecurity and Clown" [1]). In fact, when Covid hit I was in
France studying clown with Philippe Gaulier, the same clown master who
trained Sacha Baron Cohen. I'm a standup comedian and comic actor as well.

So when I made these incredibly silly clown videos [2], I didn't expect to find
myself under intense physical surveillance for several weeks. I mean, intense.
I've been under physical surveillance before for national security reporting
I've done (like this article [3]), but this was the closest I've ever seen the
security services here in Canada swing their elbows.

Knowing that physical surveillance is always accompanied by electronic
surveillance, I kept an eye on my devices. My phone got popped first. Zero-click
iPhone RCE. Two missed calls from a non-existent number right when the physical
surveillance started.

But would they risk a Qubes 0-day to go after me--for being a literal fscking clown?

They did, and per their new "flyswatter policy" left a JTRIG-style goodbye
present when they finally realized I'm just a journalist, and a clown.

One morning last week, I launched a disposable Debian 10 template with my preset
defaults of no netvm and a blank page preset--but instead a default page of
"https://www.youtube.com/" appeared. It only happened once, but it was enough.

As you are a specialist (more than I am), do you think your computer was attacked offline (breaking the LUKS encryption), or do you think it was hacked online?