Whonix released version 18.2.4.2, addressing two security vulnerabilities, including a possible clearnet leak in Non-Qubes-Whonix.

The first flaw could allow a compromised Whonix-Workstation to send traffic outside Tor using forged IPv6 source addresses. The fix adds IPv6 anti-spoofing firewall rules.

The release also fixes a local privilege-escalation vulnerability in the legacy-dist package. Both fixes were already available through Whonix's stable package repository before the point release.

Whonix is designed to route workstation traffic through its Tor gateway. A possible bypass following workstation compromise is particularly important for anonymity and OPSEC.

This was not evidence that ordinary Whonix sessions were routinely leaking IP addresses. It would need to be a vulnerable workstation.

how to remove these black bars? qemu on archlinux

can somebody help me with this? my whonix on arch qemu/kvm got these black bars after a time, how to get it back to normal

I value privacy and lack of censorship but am realizing I might be a bit too dumb to use any Linux based service, the whole thing has been very confusing in tiny ways of things I can’t get to work. The biggest issue being I cannot get my workstation to recognize my USB. I had Whonix once before briefly and I had no problem then. I got an issue once “can’t enumerate USB devices” and when I tried to click the notification it went away and I haven’t been able to get it to reappear so I could see the extent of the error of whatever. Nothing I try works, I can’t get my workstation to recognize my USB even after modifying the install to repair and issues, downloading the extension pack, etc. If anyone can help and explain exactly what I could do on a step by step basis I’d be so so grateful

It is interesting, and really amazing operating system, that is made for virtual machine usage way, and that is really more so safe, i have it for months, and i could not agree more, about those who made it, who meant it to be used via vm software, virtual box, and it is really more so amazing because of that. I am glad also to find this place to if needed be be more informed by what i see here, keep up the good work folks!

I can't even with this VirtualBox version anymore. At a certain point, if the extreme security breaks operability and functionality altogether, or at least makes it next to impossible, there's no point. Previous VirtualBox appliances didn't give me nearly as much trouble. There are myriad frustrations with this one, but, for the most part, many of my problems could be easily solved if I could just fucking paste as SysMaint, but since I can't and I'm unwilliing to type strings of 100+ characters manually, is there another way to use Whonix without a Linux host? I'm guessing even if there is, it would also have most basic functions broken in the name of security too, huh?

I don't have an internet connection on my whonix. The problem is that in my country you have to use custom bridges for tor. I went to settings in gateaway, entered the bridge - no result. I go to sysmaint mode, however I don't know how to open the shared folder (cuz I'm not a programmer), thus I entered the bridge manually. It doesn't work. It used to be way easier in 2023. Could u help, please?

hey guys pls how i can install whonix on a real hardware i need it fr (not for what's on ur mind)

Supongamos que alguien esta navegando usando Whonix, y sin darse cuenta se le apaga la maquina virtual del Gateway o directamente falla ¿Puede esto significar un problema para el anonimato? ¿Fugas?

GNU Privacy Assistant (GPA) doesn't come preinstalled, and I can't find a compatible GPA download for my whonix client anway. I even created a key pair on the terminal but I couldn't move any further.

I'm considering downloading version 17 because I know it comes with GPA pre-installed. Its a solution for someone not that super savvy like myself. Looking for any advice or documentation you guys could point me to. Thanks.

Hello,

so i use VMs daily with kanku (from opensuse), years ago with vagrant and so on. i also try to encapsulate sometimes apps with virtual machines.

does anyone know, if there's some tooling, so i can just like with vagrant, fetch new whonixs vms and instantiate them? especially that console / ssh with whonix vms is deactivated.

any idea?

So I am new to Whonix. Installed in Virtualbox, had my workstation and gateway up and running and tried to install Haveno. Problem is the sudo permissions and the inability to use them. I tried following the instructions and booted into the sysmaint persistence tasks boot option and thought I had it installed. Java was definitely there… But when I went into a normal persistence user session it wasn’t installed at all. I worked on it for many hours tonight and before I try again(or just virtualize QubesOS with KVM because F*%k virtualbox), I thought I’d reach out to the Whonix community. I can’t be the only one to try this and I couldn’t find anything that helped in any forums. Any help would earn my unwavering gratitude.
Cheers.

My whonix workstation lags a little bit.I run this on VirtualBox and my host OS is Linux Mint.The gateway isn't lagging.How can i fix that?

(I set max ammount of cpu cores and a reasonable ammount of RAM)

Thanks!

this question comes up here quite often, and over time the answers have shifted in a predictable way. early discussions focused on jurisdiction and whether providers kept logs, then audits became more common as a response to skepticism, but even those did not fully resolve the underlying concern.

more recently there has been a shift toward designs that attempt to remove provider access entirely, which seems like a different direction compared to earlier approaches discussed in this community

I can log in to user fine but when I try to log in to sysmaint when booting into sysmaint I type sysmaint as the username and get this error. It doesnt even let me attempt my password and counts it as a failed login attempt. This happened after turning autologin for sysmaint off because it was causing issues.

Hi, I am new and have installed Whonix today first time on my Mint.

No issues during install, however on my first run cant get Internet to work on my workstation.

Did system checks and the gateway has internet but on the workstation I get following errors:

Tor's Control port cannot be reached

I have not installed anything or did any setup changes on Whonix
Any help would be appreciated.

I know it’s said to not touch or mess with the Gateway in any way, but still….do i go sys and check/install updates and nothing else, or not even this? Cause i have been updating it from sys…

Has anyone had a go at using Whonix inside Qubes? And if so how was the setup? Obviously not impossible but I have no doubt would take a while building it

Hello guys I’m using whonix in qemu/kvm and the workstation is really slow. I have a string pc and it’s on 4 cores with 4gb of ram. 3d acceleration off. Anyone knows if I need to give more cores or ram? Or better settings?

Hello guys. I am using whonix on qemu/kvm and I have a problem. I’m trying to use a proxy after tor using the proxyfier method, following it step by step from the whonix wiki. I installed proxychains4 and I’m using for the first proxy on the chain - socks5 10.152.152.10 (gateway ip) 9152. After that the second one is my proxy . Using it this way my data should go from workstation - gateway - tor - proxy. It worked yesterday when i tried it and I was doing proxychains4 curl https://check.torproject.org and I was getting the ip of my proxy. Without changing anything I’m trying the same thing today and all I get is handshake failure, connection refused and warning stream isolation disabled . Have I made a mistake on the setup? Is this the correct way ?

Hey, i use Whonix 18 and unlike Whonix 17 when i shut down Whonix the Browser history and Browser Windows are gone, how can i make them persistent?

Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsQsOOtVtxM

Summary: Tails, Whonix & Qubes OS — Why Anonymity No Longer Exists in 2026

Context & Premise

The presenter (Vector T13, 17 years of practice in the field) argues that simply installing privacy-focused operating systems like Tails, Whonix, or Qubes OS is no longer sufficient for anonymity in 2026. These systems were architectural masterpieces when created but remain stuck in 2013-era threat models. The webinar demonstrates this by running 10 practical attacks against all three systems.

The Three Systems at a Glance

Tails — Boots from a USB drive, runs entirely in RAM, all traffic routed through Tor, wipes RAM on shutdown. Public since ~2013. Designed purely for anonymity. The most "plug and play" of the three.

Whonix — Runs as two virtual machines: a Gateway (internet access, no file access) and a Workstation (file access, no internet access). Connected via internal network bridge. Even if malware executes, it cannot discover the user's real IP. Well-audited for leak prevention.

Qubes OS — A hypervisor-based OS that isolates tasks into separate virtual machines ("cells"). Architecturally brilliant (developed by a prominent researcher), but almost nobody actually uses it in practice. Vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre class attacks by design.

Historical Context: The Snowden Revelations (2013)

These systems gained fame largely through Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks, which revealed:

• PRISM — NSA system that could access all user data from 200+ US tech giants (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) with a court order. Active monitoring: companies were required to submit monthly reports and cooperate on demand. No geographical restrictions.
• Treasure Map — Global internet mapping tool that could trace connection paths across countries and continents.
• The 2013 US intelligence community budget for these programs was $90 billion; by 2025 it reportedly reached $272 billion.

The presenter's key point: if this is what was possible in 2013, imagine what exists in 2026 that we don't know about.

The 10 Attacks (Scorecard: Tails 3, Whonix 1, Qubes 2 out of 10)

Attack 1: MAC Address Tracking

• Tails: Has built-in MAC spoofing — passes
• Whonix: No built-in spoofing, but running on a VM inherently changes the MAC — partial pass
• Qubes: MAC spoofing works for Ethernet but not Wi-Fi — partial fail

Attack 2: Government Blocking of Tor

• Tor is banned or restricted in many countries. Blocking methods are simple: TLS fingerprint blocking, port blocking, TCP traffic pattern analysis, blocking known entry node IPs.
• AI-enhanced DPI systems make blocking even easier now.
• None of the three systems include built-in anti-censorship/anti-DPI bypass. Bridges exist as add-ons but aren't default. All three fail.
• Named commercial systems doing this: Sophos, Fortinet, Vectra AI, Cisco Mercury (open-source on GitHub). These use machine learning and fixed rules for traffic classification.

Attack 3: Device Traffic Pattern Analysis

• ISPs can profile devices by their background network "noise" (OS services, update checks, IoT devices, etc.). This fingerprint reveals what OS you run, what devices are active, and even behavioral patterns (when you sleep, watch TV, vacuum, etc.).
• Scenario A (booting Tails on a work laptop): The normal traffic noise suddenly vanishes and is replaced by Tor traffic — a dead giveaway that a second OS was loaded.
• Scenario B (dedicated secret laptop): ISP sees a new network subject appear alongside existing devices.
• Virtual machine networking mode matters: NAT mode blends Tor into host traffic; bridged mode exposes a separate device.
• None of the three systems generate fake background noise to mask their traffic patterns. All fail.

Attack 4: Tor Volume Pattern (TVP) Analysis

• Tor fragments traffic into fixed 512-byte cells and adds minimal padding during idle periods to obscure timing.
• However, the volume of traffic is still visible. Casual browsing/messaging produces low-volume patterns; downloading large files produces massive spikes.
• This volume analysis has been used by US/EU law enforcement since at least ~2018 as an automated alarm system — a large Tor traffic spike flags the user for investigation.
• The padding Tor generates is negligibly small by 2026 standards and essentially meaningless against modern analysis.
• All three systems fail — none address traffic volume masking.

Attack 5: End-to-End Correlation

• Even Tor developers officially acknowledge they cannot defeat this attack class.
• In 2021, it was revealed that a group (likely intelligence services) controlled large numbers of both entry and exit relays, tagging packets to correlate users' entry and exit points — effectively deanonymizing them. This specific vulnerability was patched in 2022.
• A variant still works: ISP-side correlation combined with communication timing. By engaging a target in conversation (e.g., via Telegram) and sending files of known size at known times, investigators can correlate Tor traffic spikes with specific users. Over several days of snapshots, neural networks can identify targets with ~93% accuracy.
• All three systems fail.

Attack 6: RAM Forensics (+ Swap/Hibernation Files + Frame Buffer)

This is a multi-layered attack:

• RAM capture: If a machine is seized while powered on, all data in RAM (passwords, keys, messages) is stored unencrypted and can be extracted. RAM data persists for minutes after power loss; freezing RAM with liquid nitrogen can preserve it for days.
• Tails: Has a built-in "trigger tipping" mechanism that overwrites RAM (ones → zeros) on shutdown — passes.

• Whonix & Qubes: Have no RAM-clearing mechanism — fail.

• Swap/Page files: Whonix and Qubes use swap/page files, meaning RAM contents can be written to disk permanently. The presenter found 6 months of Jabber chats, images, and other sensitive data in a page file during a 2015 forensic investigation. Mentioned Belkasoft as the leading forensic tool company.

• Tails: Doesn't use swap or hibernation — passes (unless run inside a VM on Windows, where the host OS may page Tails' memory to disk).

• Whonix & Qubes: Vulnerable through swap/hibernation files — fail.

• Frame buffer forensics: GPU memory stores rendered frames (screenshots of your work). With discrete GPUs, this memory can be forensically examined. With integrated graphics, frame data goes to RAM and potentially to swap files — extractable as actual screenshots of user activity.

• All three systems are essentially vulnerable; none address this.

Attack 7: (Covered within Attack 6 discussion — swap/hibernation as sub-attack)

Attack 8: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

• Zero-days appear daily by the hundreds. Intelligence agencies target not the Tor network itself (economically unjustifiable) but the client software: browsers, messengers, email clients, media handlers.
• Key case study: FBI's 2015 "PlayPen" operation deployed malware via a zero-day that scanned users' active network connections to obtain real IPs. All Tor Browser users were compromised; Tails users were also compromised.
• Whonix users would have been safe because the workstation VM has no knowledge of the real IP address — even malware running with full privileges cannot discover it.
• Whonix: passes. Tails: fails. Qubes: partial (in raw form).

Attack 9: Ultrasonic Cross-Device Tracking

• Media files (video, audio, web resources) can contain encoded ultrasonic signals inaudible to humans. A nearby device (phone in your pocket) picks up the signal and reports back, linking your anonymous session to your real identity/device.
• Referenced Snowden's 2013 warning that using iPhones was "a crime" from a privacy standpoint.
• All three systems fail — none address this. It's a physical-layer attack that software alone can't fully prevent.

Attack 10: TCP/IP Fingerprinting

• TCP headers reveal OS type, version, and even network card characteristics. While Tor rewrites the TCP stack before it reaches the destination website, the ISP sees the original TCP fingerprint before it enters the Tor network.
• Tails is visible as Linux; Whonix reveals the virtualization platform (VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU); Qubes shows Linux with certain artifacts.
• Combined with systems like Palantir Gotham that surveil from the origin point (not the destination), this becomes a meaningful identification vector.
• None of the three systems manipulate TCP headers to mask their identity from the ISP. All fail.

Key Takeaways

1. "Install and forget" anonymity is dead. All three systems score 3/10 or lower against basic, well-known attacks. In raw/default form, they are relics of a 2013 threat model.

2. The ISP is your biggest enemy. Most attacks exploit what the ISP can observe: traffic patterns, volume, timing, TCP fingerprints, device profiles. The target website is almost irrelevant — surveillance starts at the origin.

3. AI/ML has transformed traffic analysis. Automated DPI systems (Vectra AI, Cisco Mercury, Sophos, Fortinet) combined with neural networks make Tor detection, blocking, and user correlation far easier and cheaper than manual analysis ever was.

4. Encryption ≠ anonymity. Encrypted messengers (Matrix, Element, Signal, Threema, Jabber) protect content but leak metadata, timing, and volume patterns that can deanonymize users.

5. The critical missing piece is an intermediate network device — a properly configured router, Raspberry Pi, VPN server, or Hysteria proxy that sits between your machine and the ISP. This would mitigate attacks 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 by hiding traffic patterns, masking TCP fingerprints, and bypassing Tor blocks.

6. Many vulnerabilities are fixable with proper configuration (disabling swap files, avoiding VMs on host OSes, adding traffic noise, using intermediate routing devices), but the systems don't do this by default, and most users won't do it themselves.

7. Surveillance is patient. The presenter's personal Dropbox screenshot showed the FBI requested his data in October 2022 and he wasn't notified until March 2024 — a year and a half of silent monitoring. Users can be watched for years before action is taken.

EDIT: Solved! Ended up figuring out a solution through trouble shooting at least with the vbox issue.

Just installed KickSecure as my host on my ThinkPad and having some difficulties first Im unable to use sudo on the user I get a permission denied error but can use sudo on Sysmaint, Is this by design?

Second issue was unable to install Virtualbox (ill link in the error) but was able to install most of my other software I need while on sysmaint including kvm and virtmanager which I then tried to download/install whonix and Im having difficulties if I cant run sudo on user its making it very difficult to get whonix.

Virtual box error: Solving dependencies... Error!

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming.

The following information may help to resolve the situation:

Unsatisfied dependencies:

virtualbox-qt : Depends: virtualbox (= 7.2.2-dfsg-2) but it is not installable Error: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Error: The following information from •-solver 3.0 may provide additional context:

Unable to satisfy dependencies. Reached two conflicting decisions:

but none of the choices are installable:

[no choices]

zsh: exit 100

sudo apt install virtualbox-qt

Thank you in advance I have been running these issues into chatgpt but it gives me awful answers it told me to uninstall KickSecure and reinstall it without trixie? and a bunch of other stuff that didnt make sense hopefully none of the commands I ran from it is conflicting with anything else.