A new open-source operating system will come with the option of creating one-time, disposable virtual machines on the fly as a way to protect against malicious files.
Invisible Things Lab is creating these lightweight, throwaway VMs that work with traditional virtual machines in Qubes, the open-source, Xen-based OS it plans to release in beta later this summer. Qubes was architected to minimize the attack surface in the VM environment.

Disposable VMs don't provide persistent storage and are launched on a per-document basis to open a PDF, PowerPoint, or music or video file, for instance, according to Joanna Rutkowska, founder and CEO of Invisible Things Lab. They provide a safe sandbox for opening a file or attachment: If a file opened by a disposable VM is infected, the only thing it can hurt is the throwaway VM itself, not any other applications or files.

The disposable VM is clean, and its only purpose is for viewing the file, for instance; then it gets tossed away. "You still run your email client in a 'work' AppVM -- which is not disposable [because] you need to store your email client configuration, archived emails, your documents, etc. -- but you open attachments in disposable VMs," Rutkowska says.

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