TorVirt

Whonix-like setup with a libvirt workstation and a podman container as the Tor gateway.

What are the advantage of this project over original Whonix ?

Whonix uses one VM for the workstation and another VM for the Tor gateway. This can be costly in terms of performance and resource usage. TorVirt improves on this by running the gateway in a lightweight container instead of a full VM.

Is it as secure as Whonix ?

Containers share the same kernel as the host. This means that if someone manages to exploit a bug in software present in the container (such as the tor daemon) and then uses a vulnerability in the kernel, they could gain access to the host's operating system. To mitigate this risk, some measures have been put in place:

• The gateway container is created using podman in rootless mode
• The container runs with all capabilities dropped (--cap-drop=ALL)
• Container processes cannot gain additional privileges (--security-opt=no-new-privileges)
• The entry point is executed with normal user privileges

The risk on the workstation side depends on the guest OS, on the hypervisor used and on the interactions between the host and the VM (filesystem sharing, hardware passthrough, etc.)

Use it !

Install dependencies (debian-based):

sudo apt-get install libvirt-daemon libvirt-clients podman

Download

git clone --depth=1 https://forge.chapril.org/hardcoresushi/TorVirt.git

All commits should be signed with my OpenPGP key available on keyservers. You can import it like this:

gpg --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AFE384344A45E13A

Fingerprint: B64E FE86 CEE1 D054 F082 1711 AFE3 8434 4A45 E13A
Email: Hardcore Sushi <[email protected]>

Once imported, verify the latest commit:

cd TorVirt
git verify-commit HEAD

This must show you something like:

gpg: Signature made <date> CET
gpg:                using RSA key B64EFE86CEE1D054F0821711AFE384344A45E13A
gpg: Good signature from "Hardcore Sushi <[email protected]>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: B64E FE86 CEE1 D054 F082  1711 AFE3 8434 4A45 E13A

Do not continue if the verification fails !

Setup

./torvirt configure

Create the workstation

You can create the workstation VM any way you like, with any OS, but you must select torvirt as the network. You can use virt-manager GUI to do it easily.

Make sure that torvirt is the only network configured for the VM, otherwise leaks may occur.

Start

Start the gateway:

./torvirt start

Start the workstation !