this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Would installing an OS on an external ssd and booting into that to run pirated software while blocking access to other drives in your system or physically unplugging them be one way?

Or are there better ways to isolate the software you run and use as much as possible?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GPU passthroughs can expose the host to a potentially compromised VM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting, do you have more information on that? Because why is GPU passthrough a problem but not other PCI devices?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don’t unfortunately. This is from a conversation I had with a researcher in VM escape.

As far as I’m aware peripherals are not actually passed through exactly but rather emulated on the guest machine. When you pass through a peripheral you’re only passing the input of that device, data is not sent upstream.

Whereas passing through the GPU you’re providing a means of accessing non-emulated devices through the hardware itself bypassing the isolation provided by virtualization entirely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That’s true, but the IOMMU on your host is supposed to prevent any accesses outside of the group you passed in

As long as the GPU is the only thing in that IOMMU group, you’re reasonably safe