Whonix-Workstation Security Hardening
Whonix comes with many security features . Whonix is Kicksecure™ hardened by default and also provides extensive Documentation including a System Hardening Checklist. The more you know, the safer you can be.
This page is targeted at users who wish to improve the security of their Whonix-Workstation to become even more secure.
Introduction[edit]
Whonix is by no means a perfectly hardened system. Additional hardening measures are most welcome, but at the same time hardening by default is very difficult. Until the Whonix project realizes a significant increase in resources or community assistance, extra measures will remain out of scope and hardening will be left to the upstream operating system. See Virtualization Platform for further details.
AppArmor[edit]
Learn more about AppArmor, which helps to protect against vulnerabilities by confining a program's file access based upon strict rule-sets. It is recommended to apply the available Whonix AppArmor profiles to contain various applications which are run in Whonix-Gateway™ (sys-whonix
) and/or Whonix-Workstation (anon-whonix
), like Tor, Tor Browser, Thunderbird and others.
Disable TCP SACK[edit]
TCP Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) is a commonly exploited option in the TCP protocol and not needed for many people. [1] For this reason, it is recommended to disable it unless required.
Open file /etc/sysctl.d/30_security-misc.conf
in an editor with root rights.
Non-Qubes-Whonix™
This box uses sudoedit
for better security.
sudoedit /etc/sysctl.d/30_security-misc.conf
Qubes-Whonix™
NOTES:
- When using Qubes-Whonix, this needs to be done inside the Template.
sudoedit /etc/sysctl.d/30_security-misc.conf
- After applying this change, shutdown the Template.
- All App Qubes based on the Template need to be restarted if they were already running.
- This is a general procedure required for Qubes and unspecific to Qubes-Whonix™.
Others and Alternatives
- This is just an example. Other tools could achieve the same goal.
- If this example does not work for you or if you are not using Whonix, please refer to this link.
sudoedit /etc/sysctl.d/30_security-misc.conf
Uncomment all lines starting with net.ipv4
.
This procedure can also be repeated on the Whonix-Gateway.
TCP SACK is not disabled by default because on some systems it can greatly decrease network performance. [2]
Restrict Hardware Information to Root[edit]
See Restrict Hardware Information to Root.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ For example, it has been used for remote denial of service attacks and can even lead to a Linux kernel panic.
- ↑ https://forums.whonix.org/t/disabling-tcp-sack-dsack-fack/8109/5
We believe security software like Whonix needs to remain open source and independent. Would you help sustain and grow the project? Learn more about our 12 year success story and maybe DONATE!