Fedora opens up to bundling
Fedora opens up to bundling
Posted Oct 22, 2015 22:52 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Fedora opens up to bundling by javispedro
Parent article: Fedora opens up to bundling
Not really. Most of the integration points for regular desktop use are known by now. Anything more advanced will require special-level access, but even developer desktops these days are pretty much vanilla.
> Because "command line apps are special", and because you break many of the common approaches which programs use to share data, you are encouraging developers to create "all-in-one" suites instead of collections of small programs (the so misnamed "unix way") and bigger shared libraries.
And so? App Store model works for most users. Sandboxing command-line utilities is also possible - through SELinux or similar approaches.
> Yeah... as well as any future file you open with that program, which for many users includes _ALL_ of the user's most important files
No, that's incorrect. Mac OS does not allow programs to store authorizations forever.
Please, educate yourself about the state of the art, at least.
Posted Oct 25, 2015 14:22 UTC (Sun)
by mp (subscriber, #5615)
[Link] (1 responses)
Through complex LSMs that NOBODY understands? Oh well.
Posted Oct 26, 2015 5:57 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
To be fair, in Mac OS X command line utilities invoked through exec() from sandboxed apps do have read-only access to Unix system directories, but they don't have access to users' directories.
Posted Oct 26, 2015 15:53 UTC (Mon)
by javispedro (guest, #83660)
[Link] (5 responses)
That's a _huge_ thing to say. How do you even know 6 months by now there won't be a usecase that needs direct access from your word processor to your phone?
Hell, I'm sure _I_ wouldn't bet against it!
> And so? App Store model works for most users.
NO! You're affirming the consequent here. I'm precisely arguing that it does NOT work! And I even explicitly mentioned above how even MS has come to realize this.
> Sandboxing command-line utilities is also possible
> No, that's incorrect. Mac OS does not allow programs to store authorizations forever.
So I'll just infect the equivalent of normal.dot and reload myself on startup everytime. _A single bug on that binary compromises every further file saved by that binary_. Unless you want to prevent saving any state at all?
> Please, educate yourself about the state of the art, at least.
Please turn your brain on a bit before replying, as you've been told above.
Posted Oct 26, 2015 17:29 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (4 responses)
> NO! You're affirming the consequent here. I'm precisely arguing that it does NOT work! And I even explicitly mentioned above how even MS has come to realize this.
> So I'll just infect the equivalent of normal.dot and reload myself on startup everytime. _A single bug on that binary compromises every further file saved by that binary_. Unless you want to prevent saving any state at all?
Please, explain how this is worse than the quagmire we have in Linux right now when a "dancing cows" LibreOffice document can send all your credit card info to Nigeria.
> Please turn your brain on a bit before replying, as you've been told above.
Posted Oct 26, 2015 19:55 UTC (Mon)
by javispedro (guest, #83660)
[Link] (3 responses)
> I think a billion smartphone users might disagree with you. And can you point me to an MS article about failing AppStore models?
>> There's a reason unsandboxed new programs appear daily even on platforms where the default is to be sandboxed (such as Windows or OS X). Any current platform that only allows for sandboxed binaries (WinRT, iPad *cough*) falls straight into the "it's completely useless for any serious work" territory.
> You can't do it. It's an obvious vector and so Apple's own processor tools have a special sandbox mode for it. It allows you to open and write the shared config, but nothing else.
> Please, explain how this is worse than the quagmire we have in Linux right now when a "dancing cows" LibreOffice document can send all your credit card info to Nigeria.
Posted Oct 26, 2015 20:16 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
> Why not? As long as there's _any_ saved state (call it normal.dot, call it "shared config" -- what's the difference?) between invocations, then every future document you open with that program is compromised.
> Point is, even with OS X style sandboxing, a single "dancing cows" document will also be able to send all your company finances to Nigeria.
Also, AppStore model allows vendors to quickly make and QA a patch for a security issue. With distros you have to go through maintainers and slow release process. Then you have to do QA for multiple distro versions.
It's pretty clear which security model is more advantageous.
> Not only that, but OS X style sandboxing is so problematic to implement, it might very well be not worth the effort, save perhaps for platform that are already usability limited from the start.
Posted Oct 27, 2015 7:20 UTC (Tue)
by javispedro (guest, #83660)
[Link] (1 responses)
But you need _operating system_ updates in order to punch these new holes in the sandbox, not software vendor actions. And these introduce even more headaches, because punching new holes may break old software (or even new software, if we look into selinux). Unless you're thinking final software developers will ship the list of sandbox holes they need, but while this is a very interesting approach for a user trusted catalog of software (e.g. distro repository) it does not seem valid for a general "app store" model.
Remember that I'm saying the Apple sandbox model does not even provide half of the holes required for even a mere office suite to work well. The only such program that I currently known working under the sandbox is NeoOffice, and they do trickery such as showing up an OSX open dialog pointing at the file it wants to read every time it wants to read some random file. They also disable all extensions and is generally a pain to use. And this is most probably an example of a program that in theory seems easy to sandbox.
> Nope, it _might_ be able to infiltrate documents as you open them. It won't be able to read browser history or install spyware.
Sorry but we're going circles about this:
And in practice this is a much more common scenario than a malicious presentation reading your browser story -- see long tradition of Office viruses. After all, you've already compromised the office suite, so there's 0% additional effort in doing that, while there's sure to be some platform and browser-dependent code in reading browser history.
I still believe in that a smaller programs model is much better for security, and that the App Store model clearly goes against smaller programs; if only because it becomes much harder to share data between programs.
> Linux-style dependency management clearly doesn't work well.
Posted Oct 27, 2015 8:02 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
> And these introduce even more headaches, because punching new holes may break old software (or even new software, if we look into selinux).
> And in practice this is a much more common scenario than a malicious presentation reading your browser story -- see long tradition of Office viruses. After all, you've already compromised the office suite, so there's 0% additional effort in doing that, while there's sure to be some platform and browser-dependent code in reading browser history.
> I still believe in that a smaller programs model is much better for security, and that the App Store model clearly goes against smaller programs; if only because it becomes much harder to share data between programs.
So let's actually think about the threat model. Suppose I want to steal users' credit card information.
2) I have an exploit for LibreOffice itself. With a naïve distro model I simply need to hack LibreOffice and I instantly get access to browser's history with all the juicy CC info. With the sandboxed code I have to try and infect other documents, hoping that a user eventually opens a document with CC info.
So it appears that distro model provides no advantage here. Now, there might be a question of update speed. A distro might be able to update a shared library faster than a vendor can go through a full formal QA process. And that actually might be a disadvantage.
Fedora opens up to bundling
Fedora opens up to bundling
Fedora opens up to bundling
And precisely from a decade of SELinux experiences I know how stupid most sandboxing is, and how hard it is to actually make it usable.
Fedora opens up to bundling
> Hell, I'm sure _I_ wouldn't bet against it!
Operating systems are not set in stone. If there's a demand then new integration points are likely to be added. That is happening all the time both with iOS and Android.
I think a billion smartphone users might disagree with you. And can you point me to an MS article about failing AppStore models?
You can't do it. It's an obvious vector and so Apple's own processor tools have a special sandbox mode for it. It allows you to open and write the shared config, but nothing else.
Should I repeat my advice?
Fedora opens up to bundling
To sum it up: not only there's a huge amount of holes that need to be punched, but you need to keep punching brand new holes "all the time".
>> And please don't use the "people do real work on an iPad" argument. By now even MS marketing guys have realized how stupid it is: they actually promote the completely unsandboxed environment called Win32 as their distinguishing feature over the plethora of tablets.
Why not? As long as there's _any_ saved state (call it normal.dot, call it "shared config" -- what's the difference?) between invocations, then every future document you open with that program is compromised.
Point is, even with OS X style sandboxing, a single "dancing cows" document will also be able to send all your company finances to Nigeria. Not only that, but OS X style sandboxing is so problematic to implement, it might very well be not worth the effort, save perhaps for platform that are already usability limited from the start.
Fedora opens up to bundling
And that's fine. Vendors release new versions of applications all the time.
You assume that you can infiltrate through configuration. It's much less likely, especially if good config framework is used.
Nope, it _might_ be able to infiltrate documents as you open them. It won't be able to read browser history or install spyware.
So what's your proposal? Linux-style dependency management clearly doesn't work well.
Fedora opens up to bundling
>> But sandboxing as it is done now usually involves making programs larger (e.g. Libreoffice-like huge suites instead of collections of individual programs cooperating, like in TeX), and this means that one single bug in the almost never used code that imports .mp4 fart sounds to use in Libreoffice presentations would also be enough to access ALL your sikret files.
Note that sandboxing is independent of dependency management.
Fedora opens up to bundling
Yes. But currently application vendors are not just at the mercy of the OS, but at the mercy of many packagers! It's even worse - what if your app depends on a feature of a package with asshole maintainer?
Quite unlikely. New APIs rarely affect the old APIs.
Viruses these days exist to actually earn money for their developers. Botnetting and browser history (including CC information) are the easiest target, while documents are almost always useless.
So basically you're saying: "I believe in magic and unicorns". No packaging system can make a complicated office suite a "small" program. It might remove a bunch of peripheral dependencies, but nothing else.
1) If I have an exploit for a widely used library like zlib or libpng then I probably wouldn't want to bother exploiting LibreOffice, never mind trying to exploit a sandboxed LibreOffice.