Comment by mcny
8 hours ago
> 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.