Oddbean

Virtual Machines for Beginners This is an easy read to learn better security and resist tyranny We all know the concept of a burner phone that you throw away. What if you could have an electronic version of a phone to dispose of easily? Well if it’s an electronic fake version of a computer, this is a virtual machine. Virtual machines (“VM”) are fake recreations of a computer. Normally when people think of this, they think of corporations creating a “cloud” in a datacenter. But you can also use a virtual machine on your home computer to ironically resist these big cloud corporations trying to spy on you. Did you know the CIA sponsors tracking firms and ad networks on Facebook? [1][2] Can’t delete Facebook? Put that browser in a VM! Rather than pay money for a whole 2nd computer, when your job asks you to download proprietary software, you can put it in a VM, to prevent it from seeing your other activity. If you use Linux, you can make a Windows VM for Windows software. If you want to try out a Nostr client, but don’t know if you can trust it. Then a VM is a great place to test! VMs contain malware. And the part that creates this fake PC is called a hypervisor. There is a risk of it breaking out of the VM. How much is the risk? Well there’s different types of VMs, If it’s running on top of your real operating system, it’s a level 2 hypervisor. This is Oracle’s VirtBox. If it’s running directly on your real hardware, it’s a level 1 hypervisor. This is VirtManager KVM. If it’s barely even got a host OS, this is Xen. And it’s how QubesOS works. The lower the level of virtualization, the harder it is for malware to break out. Remember at the start of this article, we said burner phones? You can install Android in a VM. This is infinite burner phones for corrupt spyware apps! We exposed you to the concept here, now you can learn more from our website or others. References on CIA, add the dot: [1] cbsnews com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-seriously/ [2] corbettreport com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture-capital-firm-preview/