qvm-connect-tcp support for Windows qubes #7899
Description
The problem you're addressing (if any)
Currently the qvm-connect-tcp functionality, which allows users to open direct TCP connections between VMs (even if they don't have networking), is only supported on Linux.
Windows support for this functionality does not exist, meaning that without at least having some networking VM configured for a Windows VM it would be "hard" to achieve any kind of connectivity.
The solution you'd like
The solution I would like is to have feature parity between Linux and Windows regarding qvm-connect-tcp.
A possible solution I implemented in the following pull request: QubesOS/qubes-core-agent-windows#9
The solution there extends the existing feature set of qrexec-client-vm to allow for tunneling of TCP connections.
The value to a user, and who that user might be
Keeping attack surface areas as small as possible is key to achieving some resemblance of security. With the proposed change Windows VMs can have direct connections without having access to a network VM. Or they can access Linux/Windows VMs that don't have any network connectivity. This means a reduced attack surface for Qubes users that are bound to Windows in one way or another assuming the software they have to run can function at all with these networking limitations.