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We really need better (easier to use) sandboxing for apps, or in this case a project (create directory, few allowed apps, no access to rest of fs or a dummy fs,
by OJFord 3y ago
We really need better (easier to use) sandboxing for apps, or in this case a project (create directory, few allowed apps, no access to rest of fs or a dummy fs, whitelisted urls/IPs only, etc.).
Sure you can use a VM, a container, firejail (for an app), etc. but it all has quite a high barrier to entry & burden to bother with, so the vast majority don't, and the majority of the rest only do occasionally for something they already trust less.
- louislang 3y agoWe (https://phylum.io https://phylum.io) actually open sourced our sandbox for this exact purpose. https://github.com/phylum-dev/birdcage https://github.com/phylum-dev/birdcage It's baked into our CLI and supports limiting access to network, disk, etc. during package installation. For example, running something like phylum npm install react Will perform the installation in a way that disallows access to disk and network that aren't explicitly approved. This prevents malicious packages from grabbing and exfiltrating things like developer SSH keys during package install.
- OJFord 3y agoHa, well now I look like a shill installed in the audience. Nice though, I'll give that a go, thanks. It's probably manageable through direnv & some shell magic, but it'd be nice to have a built-in way of saying 'everything in this directory gets run through phylum [with these defaults] and has access to only this directory [by default]'.
- louislang 3y agoIt's basically managed by a TOML file, so should be able to specify something like that. If that's not to your liking, you can extend the CLI using Typescript and make it do whatever you want. If you have any questions/issues, feel free to shoot me a message. My email should be in my profile!
- fsflover 3y agoTry Qubes OS. It runs everything in VMs, but the UI is amazingly usable. The VMs look like ordinary windows with different border colors. Inter-VM copy-paste works with ctrl+shift+c/v.
- OJFord 3y agoWell... sure, but frankly 'just use a different operating system' is exactly the kind of 'we need better (easier)' than I'm talking about.
- fsflover 3y agoIMO the whole approach to security in ordinary operating systems is practically flawed, if you actually need a strong security guarantee.