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Most malware is executed by the machine's owner in some sense. The level of friction that establishes that the owner knows what's going on and actually intends

Most malware is executed by the machine's owner in some sense. The level of friction that establishes that the owner knows what's going on and actually intends to execute particular code with particular privileges is not small. It's important that it be surmountable, but it's not small.

behnamoh 4y ago
> The level of friction that establishes that the owner knows what's going on and actually intends to execute particular code with particular privileges is not small. That level of friction is $99 :/
sublinear 4y ago
In a properly virtualized environment it doesn't matter since all resources are decoupled from the environment the software runs in. This gives all the control back to the user. Nobody should be bullied into just accepting all permissions the developer wants. The developer should be forced to gracefully degrade their UX when their dependencies are denied without preventing access to the core service and should be sued into oblivion when they violate this basic promise under accessibility laws. From a developer perspective virtualization would also make accomplishing this much easier since they no longer have to be limited to crappy APIs that are not just sometimes vulnerable and incompatible but restricted on purpose under bogus pretense. If the user can't determine what an app does with the resources it wants it should be trivial for the OS to mock the resources, see what happens, and report it back to the user. i.e. when enabling networking the app attempts to phone home somewhere shady, when enabling file system access it attempts to read/write outside its own directories, etc. I am pretty sure this would not scare off users, but make them curious.
- closeparen 4y ago
  That's the dream. But while the browser is now sandboxed well enough to stand up to the wide open internet, it can't compete with native on performance. And native can't (yet) be sandboxed as well as the browser without giving up its performance. Power-constrained mobile environments will likely be the last to fall on that one. I look forward to it, though!
ttubrian 4y ago
But the owner is able to bundle any arbitrary code into an app and run it locally on their own phone for 7 days. Then it auto-deletes and there's nothing you can do about it. The only class of malware that the currently-mandated friction is preventing is the kind that appears benevolent for 7 days then strikes on day 8.
- closeparen 4y ago
  The time limit prevents this from becoming a normal distribution channel for legitimate apps, which would condition users to click mindlessly through it. It an attacker wants to try, most people will think it’s weird and scary. But developers only need to do basic developer things (cut builds) to get around it. Pretty clever if you ask me.
bakuninsbart 4y ago
There are child safety locks, and it is ok to have them as a default on computers as well, but there should be a way to turn it off and lose warranty. (And they should probably be renamed to something less inflammatory) For me it is just a terrible feeling to not really own a device I bought, so I avoid them wherever I can. Annoyingly, this is getting increasingly more difficult. As a potentially interesting aside, today lack of programmability seems to be a sign of a maturing market. I recently researched e-cigarettes that I can program to time me, those that have a computer in them basically all allow for writing your own programs. Same with the smart watch market, although Apple is trying its best to ruin that as well.

behnamoh 4y ago

> The level of friction that establishes that the owner knows what's going on and actually intends to execute particular code with particular privileges is not small. That level of friction is $99 :/

sublinear 4y ago

In a properly virtualized environment it doesn't matter since all resources are decoupled from the environment the software runs in. This gives all the control back to the user. Nobody should be bullied into just accepting all permissions the developer wants. The developer should be forced to gracefully degrade their UX when their dependencies are denied without preventing access to the core service and should be sued into oblivion when they violate this basic promise under accessibility laws. From a developer perspective virtualization would also make accomplishing this much easier since they no longer have to be limited to crappy APIs that are not just sometimes vulnerable and incompatible but restricted on purpose under bogus pretense. If the user can't determine what an app does with the resources it wants it should be trivial for the OS to mock the resources, see what happens, and report it back to the user. i.e. when enabling networking the app attempts to phone home somewhere shady, when enabling file system access it attempts to read/write outside its own directories, etc. I am pretty sure this would not scare off users, but make them curious.

closeparen 4y ago
That's the dream. But while the browser is now sandboxed well enough to stand up to the wide open internet, it can't compete with native on performance. And native can't (yet) be sandboxed as well as the browser without giving up its performance. Power-constrained mobile environments will likely be the last to fall on that one. I look forward to it, though!

ttubrian 4y ago

But the owner is able to bundle any arbitrary code into an app and run it locally on their own phone for 7 days. Then it auto-deletes and there's nothing you can do about it. The only class of malware that the currently-mandated friction is preventing is the kind that appears benevolent for 7 days then strikes on day 8.

closeparen 4y ago
The time limit prevents this from becoming a normal distribution channel for legitimate apps, which would condition users to click mindlessly through it. It an attacker wants to try, most people will think it’s weird and scary. But developers only need to do basic developer things (cut builds) to get around it. Pretty clever if you ask me.

bakuninsbart 4y ago

There are child safety locks, and it is ok to have them as a default on computers as well, but there should be a way to turn it off and lose warranty. (And they should probably be renamed to something less inflammatory) For me it is just a terrible feeling to not really own a device I bought, so I avoid them wherever I can. Annoyingly, this is getting increasingly more difficult. As a potentially interesting aside, today lack of programmability seems to be a sign of a maturing market. I recently researched e-cigarettes that I can program to time me, those that have a computer in them basically all allow for writing your own programs. Same with the smart watch market, although Apple is trying its best to ruin that as well.