In Qubes, is it possible to set up a VM that can receive email, but not send information out, via email or otherwise?
The motivation is: Many online accounts rely on an email address to reset passwords. However, the VM that handles inbound emails, processes a lot of untrusted input. If the VM gets compromised by an attacker, the attacker can then send password reset emails and read them. So to defend against this, I want to prevent the compromised VM from communicating out the contents of these password reset emails.
Specifically:
1. Assume the VM is compromised (can't rely on in-VM enforcement mechanisms).
2. Assume the email provider is not compromised
To further illustrate the problem, here are example setups and why they don't work:
Setup 1: Use qubes firewall to restrict to the email provider's server and IMAP port. Block UDP requests using qvm-firewall.
Why it doesn't work: Attacker can create an account on the same email provider and connect to their account (the firewall rules will not prevent this). They can then sync emails containing any data, to their account.
Setup 2: Like Setup 1, but use POP3.
Why it doesn't work: Attacker creates account at provider, transmits data via POP3 delete operations.
Does anyone have a email setup with this inbound-only property, ideally that does not require running their own email server?
Thank you.
As long as your
dedicated Thunderbird VM has internet connection (which it needs
to receive email) an attacker can get any data out of it using
Thunderbird exploits, whether you set up outgoing mail server or
not.