Comment by didntcheck
8 hours ago
That's true, but the same may already be true of your browser's cookie file. I believe Chrome on MacOS and Windows (unsure about Linux) now does use OS features to prevent it being read from other executables, but Firefox doesn't (yet)
But protecting specific directories is just whack-a-mole. The real fix is to properly sandbox code - an access whitelist rather than endlessly updating a patchy blacklist
> But protecting specific directories is just whack-a-mole. The real fix is to properly sandbox code - an access whitelist rather than blacklist
I believe Wayland (don't quote me on this because I know exactly zero technical details) as opposed to x is a big step in this direction. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe this effort alone has been ongoing for a decade. A proper sandbox will take longer and risks being coopted by corporate drones trying to take away our right to use our computers as we see fit.
Wayland is a significant improvement in one specific area (and it's not this one).
All programs in X were trusted and had access to the same drawing space. This meant that one program could see what another one was drawing. Effectively this meant that any compromised program could see your whole screen if you were using X.
Wayland has a different architecture where programs only have access to the resources to draw their own stuff, and then a separate compositor joins all the results together.
Wayland does nothing about the REST of the application permission model - ability to access files, send network requests etc. For that you need more sandboxing e.g. Flatpak, Containers, VMs
Maybe I am missing something but how and why would a display protocol have anything to do with file access model??
In Wayland you have these xdg-portals that broker access to the filesystem, microphone, webcam, etc. I am not knowledgeable about the security model though.
Plan9 had per-process namespaces in 1995.
One could easily allow or restrict visibility of almost anything to any program. There were/are some definite usability concerns with how it is done today (the OS was not designed to be friendly, but to try new things) and those could easily be solved. The core of this existed in the Plan9 kernel and the Plan9 kernel is small enough to be understood by one person.
I’m kinda angry that other operating systems don’t do this today. How much malware would be stopped in its tracks and made impotent if every program launched was inherently and natively walled off from everything else by default?