5 ms·

Absolutely not. It's an outdated concept from the days where all the software you run was either preinstalled or you created it yourself and the only security c

Absolutely not. It's an outdated concept from the days where all the software you run was either preinstalled or you created it yourself and the only security consideration was stopping you from messing up another users setup on the shared computer.

incompatible 7y ago
My desktop environment doesn't associate data with particular programs. Data is ideally in standard file formats and multiple programs can interact with it. I can see that tying data to a particular program may improve security, but it would also be extremely inconvenient.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  >extremely inconvenient. Maybe. I'd argue "extremely". It does suck, for instance, that Discord as a Flatpak can only access a fixed subset of $HOME directories. But it can't scan your machine's processes like ordinary Discord can (to report the game you're playing), which is a privacy gain. The security (and portability) advantages of sandboxing/containerizing apps may outweigh the hassle of the workarounds/memory inefficiency. Meanwhile, with unfettered access, you have things like: https://www.thegamer.com/civilization-6-steam-eula-change-spying-permission-data-collection/ https://www.thegamer.com/civilization-6-steam-eula-change-sp... >"We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use" They also mentioned "photo", which there's no obvious way to collect. I remember someone joking, "What, do they go through your directories, looking for a picture of you?!"
  - incompatible 7y ago
    There'd be a case for sandboxing proprietary software, for sure.
    - dTal 7y ago
      With the recent raft of vulnerabilities such as Spectre/Meltdown and Rowhammer, there's an argument to be made that maybe, just maybe, running "untrusted" code on the same physical machine as "trusted" code is fundamentally insecure. Not just because of those particular vulnerabilities, but because they all seem to point to some sort of axiom - when two pieces of code share physical state (CPU, RAM etc), you cannot ever be 100% certain that they do not affect each other in some subtle way. And even if the hardware itself was perfect, it's not like you can practically prove all the code on a modern machine correct and flawless. So maybe, instead of trying to somehow make it safe to run untrusted software on our machines, we should focus on making sure all the code that runs on our machines is trusted - not in the sense of "proved correct", but in the sense of "written without malicious intent". If you regard Discord scanning your processes as an unacceptable invasion of privacy, and it bothers you that there's no way to turn that off, perhaps avoiding Discord is a better solution than trying to sandbox it.
      - incompatible 7y ago
        We could just put all our personal data on some non-networked machine with minimal software installed. But data like that wouldn't really be much use for anything. The data is already being shared over the Internet. People just want the data to stay in the right context: financial details shared with a bank shouldn't find its way onto Facebook or a random game company. Using a separate computer for each counterparty would be more secure, but again not very convenient.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    It's possible to have sandboxing and convenience. Programs just need to change the apis they use. Rather than expecting to have access to everything on the system programs can just request the OS file picker API and get the user to select the file they want to access and the sandboxed program is now allowed access just like how it works for websites.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Multiple programs can interact with data on iOS - but you have to explicitly give the app access to the file.

incompatible 7y ago

My desktop environment doesn't associate data with particular programs. Data is ideally in standard file formats and multiple programs can interact with it. I can see that tying data to a particular program may improve security, but it would also be extremely inconvenient.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
>extremely inconvenient. Maybe. I'd argue "extremely". It does suck, for instance, that Discord as a Flatpak can only access a fixed subset of $HOME directories. But it can't scan your machine's processes like ordinary Discord can (to report the game you're playing), which is a privacy gain. The security (and portability) advantages of sandboxing/containerizing apps may outweigh the hassle of the workarounds/memory inefficiency. Meanwhile, with unfettered access, you have things like: https://www.thegamer.com/civilization-6-steam-eula-change-spying-permission-data-collection/ https://www.thegamer.com/civilization-6-steam-eula-change-sp... >"We may combine the information with your personal information and across other computers or devices that you may use" They also mentioned "photo", which there's no obvious way to collect. I remember someone joking, "What, do they go through your directories, looking for a picture of you?!"
- incompatible 7y ago
  There'd be a case for sandboxing proprietary software, for sure.
  - dTal 7y ago
    With the recent raft of vulnerabilities such as Spectre/Meltdown and Rowhammer, there's an argument to be made that maybe, just maybe, running "untrusted" code on the same physical machine as "trusted" code is fundamentally insecure. Not just because of those particular vulnerabilities, but because they all seem to point to some sort of axiom - when two pieces of code share physical state (CPU, RAM etc), you cannot ever be 100% certain that they do not affect each other in some subtle way. And even if the hardware itself was perfect, it's not like you can practically prove all the code on a modern machine correct and flawless. So maybe, instead of trying to somehow make it safe to run untrusted software on our machines, we should focus on making sure all the code that runs on our machines is trusted - not in the sense of "proved correct", but in the sense of "written without malicious intent". If you regard Discord scanning your processes as an unacceptable invasion of privacy, and it bothers you that there's no way to turn that off, perhaps avoiding Discord is a better solution than trying to sandbox it.
    - incompatible 7y ago
      We could just put all our personal data on some non-networked machine with minimal software installed. But data like that wouldn't really be much use for anything. The data is already being shared over the Internet. People just want the data to stay in the right context: financial details shared with a bank shouldn't find its way onto Facebook or a random game company. Using a separate computer for each counterparty would be more secure, but again not very convenient.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  It's possible to have sandboxing and convenience. Programs just need to change the apis they use. Rather than expecting to have access to everything on the system programs can just request the OS file picker API and get the user to select the file they want to access and the sandboxed program is now allowed access just like how it works for websites.
scarface74 7y ago
Multiple programs can interact with data on iOS - but you have to explicitly give the app access to the file.