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This underscores a major issue with commercial software like Steam and games obtained therein. You cannot trust that software not to maliciously scan your devic
by drnick1 3mo ago
This underscores a major issue with commercial software like Steam and games obtained therein. You cannot trust that software not to maliciously scan your device for secrets such as crypto wallets or other information. Ideally, you want to run apps like Steam, Discord, Zoom and whatever else does not come from a trusted distribution repo as a separate user. This is not always convenient however, and the compromise I adopted on my gaming PC is to bubblewrap Steam. Do not mount things like /home and devices games should not be using in the sandbox.
- kibwen 3mo agoThis is what my Steam Deck is for. There's no gap like air gap.
- drnick1 3mo agoDedicated hardware is definitely the most secure option, but realistically it is even less convenient than a separate user. You can't realistically play graphically intensive games on a Deck, and separate workstations are very unaffordable at the moment.
- techjamie 3mo agoIn theory you could change the steam command line fpr each game and have them launch in bubblewrap. Though I'm not sure how well that would play with graphics drivers. It might be friendly with AMD, but my experience is that NVIDIA is a pain to have play nice with containers.
- drnick1 3mo agoI sandbox Steam itself for simplicity. My experience with Nvidia and Wayland has been good. I simply exposed /dev/nvidia*, a few networking-related files in /etc and system binaries like /usr.
- jallasprit 3mo agoHow are you doing the sandboxing?
- drnick1 3mo agoBubblewrap.
- charcircuit 3mo agoAndroid solves this problem by making it impossible for an app to access the storage of another app. No matter how much the Steam app wants to see your crypto wallet's key it is not possible (assuming no Linux exploit).
- drnick1 3mo agoThat's nice, but a cell phone isn't a viable gaming platform for anything but very basic games. And Android, at least in its typical Googled form, has its own set of problems; it's a privacy nightmare.
- charcircuit 3mo agoAnd despite what you claim it is the most profitable gaming platform. There are lessons you can learn from them.
- xboxnolifes 3mo agoSkinner boxes of MTX in peoples' pockets is a good business model. The lessons were learned, and gacha games are huge on PC.
- Ferret7446 3mo agoThe vast majority of "gamers" play on a phone. Would you consider something like Neverness to Everness to be "very basic"? Times have changed
- wps 3mo agoAgreed. I’ve always disliked having anything to do with gaming on my primary OS, always choosing to compartmentalize that stuff away from anything sensitive. The only exception is DRM free standalone games like Factorio, which has pretty safe mods compared to something like Minecraft.
- akimbostrawman 3mo agoflatpak is the most convenient way to securely run steam on linux