8 ms·

In some sense, I rather take solace in the fact that hacks, attacks, cracks, leaks, etc. are continuing to happen regularly --- they are a sign that there is st

In some sense, I rather take solace in the fact that hacks, attacks, cracks, leaks, etc. are continuing to happen regularly --- they are a sign that there is still some freedom left in society. I think this strongly conflates many issues. First of all, WannaCry spreads through a weakness in Microsoft's SMB implementation. Such a weakness can occur in both walled-garden and open systems. Secondly, sandboxing, besides improving security, can increase our freedom: we get to decide which application can access what data. In the current model used on many computers, an application can access all user files and exfiltrate usage patterns, address books, etc. WannaCry would be pretty ineffective if it was sandboxed and could not encrypt user's files. Now such malware (as we've seen with the Handbrake malware) can upload all your passwords, browser history, etc. Sandboxing is fine. It should be up to the user what we decide to sandbox and what not. (I do agree that society is moving towards being totalitarian. Or at least, making itself extremely vulnerable to totalitarianism.)

dahauns 9y ago
"Sandboxing is fine. It should be up to the user what we decide to sandbox and what not." True - but isn't the latter exactly the problem we're facing? That we increasingly don't get to decide whether we want that sandbox or not?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Exactly. First of all, I'd like to be in control of sandboxing. Secondly, and this is just my dream, I'd love sandboxing to be designed to allow me as a user to easily pierce it, so that I could e.g. augment a sandboxed app with my own code if I don't like how it does something. Unfortunately, the nature of the world is such that if you allow users to control sandboxing, the next wave of attacks will come from applications that kindly ask users to disable the sandbox because of $reasons.
  - zrm 9y ago
    > Unfortunately, the nature of the world is such that if you allow users to control sandboxing, the next wave of attacks will come from applications that kindly ask users to disable the sandbox because of $reasons. You can make the best locks in the world and it's all for nothing if every time an attacker knocks on the door the user opens it up and lets them in, but the solution can't be to weld shut every door. Security commonly fails at UX. We could do better. But at some point, if you ask the user "should this app access your private information" and the user says yes, that's what needs to happen, and the user needs to learn when to say no.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    Do not make it easy to disable the sandbox, but keep the user in control. Linux evades a huge amount of virus and phishing just because you have to `chmod +x` stuff before running, for example. A "Software wants to do nasty stuff. Allow | Disallow" prompt just does not make it. Also, users will want to piece the sandbox some times, do not make it an all or nothing situation. Make giving common permissions easy, rare permission hard, and give fine grained control over them.

dahauns 9y ago

"Sandboxing is fine. It should be up to the user what we decide to sandbox and what not." True - but isn't the latter exactly the problem we're facing? That we increasingly don't get to decide whether we want that sandbox or not?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Exactly. First of all, I'd like to be in control of sandboxing. Secondly, and this is just my dream, I'd love sandboxing to be designed to allow me as a user to easily pierce it, so that I could e.g. augment a sandboxed app with my own code if I don't like how it does something. Unfortunately, the nature of the world is such that if you allow users to control sandboxing, the next wave of attacks will come from applications that kindly ask users to disable the sandbox because of $reasons.
- zrm 9y ago
  > Unfortunately, the nature of the world is such that if you allow users to control sandboxing, the next wave of attacks will come from applications that kindly ask users to disable the sandbox because of $reasons. You can make the best locks in the world and it's all for nothing if every time an attacker knocks on the door the user opens it up and lets them in, but the solution can't be to weld shut every door. Security commonly fails at UX. We could do better. But at some point, if you ask the user "should this app access your private information" and the user says yes, that's what needs to happen, and the user needs to learn when to say no.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Do not make it easy to disable the sandbox, but keep the user in control. Linux evades a huge amount of virus and phishing just because you have to `chmod +x` stuff before running, for example. A "Software wants to do nasty stuff. Allow | Disallow" prompt just does not make it. Also, users will want to piece the sandbox some times, do not make it an all or nothing situation. Make giving common permissions easy, rare permission hard, and give fine grained control over them.