[DCTF23] Simon Newton: The hacker's workstation - Hardware and Software security
Channel: DragonSec SI
Date: 2023-09-26

Simon Newton is part of the community at QubesOS (https://qubesos.org) and also a long term contributor to the Heads Project (https://osresearch.net), where he has ported platforms to the project. Heads firmware is used by OEM vendors on some Google Chromebooks, Puri.sm devices, as well as being used by security professionals who need firmware and operating system integrity attestation from boot time. 

QubesOS is a reasonably secure Linux operating system that provides security through isolation - while also giving hackers a 'one stop box' ability to run multiple operating systems (Debian, Windows, Kali, Arch, Whonix, etc) as well as perform remote pen testing of different OS types within the same physical hardware. 

In this talk we will explore the threat models addressed by this combination, some of the attacks it can prevent if an adversary targets you with, how easy it is to actually set up this kind of system and what cool stuff you can do with it once you make the switch.