It's not fully sandboxed if it can write to my screen! That filthy app, writing stuff all over the place!
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Haskell programmers when you tell them the main function isn't pure
That's why we have Wayland. :)
What if your app actually needs access to the internet?
Or actually do anything useful? No network, no filesystem.. it's a hello world app isn't it..
No filesystem access for a flatpak app just means it cant read host system files on its own, without user permission. You can still give it files or directories of files through the file explorer for the app to work with, just that it's much safer since it can only otherwise view files in its sandbox.
Which is fine for some apps, try that with an IDE.
Why does an IDE need unfettered access to my whole FS? Access to the project directory, and maybe the runtime directory, have to be enough.
To be fair, the title says more apps, not all apps..
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There are portals: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/desktop-integration.html#portals . they allow secure access to many features. Also any flatpak app still has access to a private app-specific filesystem, just not to the host.
Doesn't work for all applications but for many sand boxing is possible without a loss of features.
There's Obfuscate, an image redactor, and Metadata Cleaner which is self-descriptive. Both works properly without any filesystem access at all, because they use the file picker portal to ask the user for the files to be processed.
Portal.
Oh come on, what modern program actually needs to communicate or access the file system?
Exactly all programs should be web based cloud subscription only. We don't want that filthy code on our rgb nvme drives
Wouldn't want the gaping security hole open that is hypnotizing the user via RGB control.
Download the internet along with it!
I remember in 1995-ish or something when I used the internet for the first time using the Netscape browser.... And I was asking a friend if he had tried all the web sites yet. Just got a weird look back.... :) I didn't know what the internet was back then at first.
The app can then declare the network permission and it will still be marked as safe.
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I like how the app name is blacked out so as not to dox the flathub app.
Wouldn't want bad actors to find privacy respecting software.
Sanboxed from prying eyes, it's completely safe.
What really needs to happen:
Flatpak packages should ask for every permission they need, and the user needs to approve every one of them.
Right now, we have this weird in-between state where some flatpak packages ship with limited permissions (like Bottles). That's because every permission the package asks for is immediately granted. The user doesn't get a chance to refuse these requests. This current model serves to make life more difficult for non-malicious flatpak packagers while failing to protect users from malicious packages.
Also, GNOME needs a Flatpak permissions center like KDE. You shouldn't need to install a third party program to manage permissions.
Absolutely, permissions should be disabled by default, and only when the app needs to do something that requires a certain permission should it ask for it.
Maybe even do something like Android, where permissions automatically get revoked if you don't use an app for a certain time. I love that feature.
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Situation actually even worse https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html#flatpak
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Why is it censored lol
It's actually Dippi but I don't want to look like I'm advertising it here
!peepee !< is safe
Likes like Hello World is ready to ship.
With a bit of modifying code to use the color picker and maybe rearranging the workflow to adapt to the new system, apps as advanced as DaVinci Resolve and LibreOffice can have permissions as restrictive as this (the network permission would of course may be needed but it would still be marked as Safe by Flathub).
You can use the file picker API to open the files or folders your app would need to access while having no filesystem permissions at all. You can access the camera, microphone, and GPS without the user devices portal, by simply using the respective portals where the user has the power to allow or deny access to such devices as they wish.
You can record the screen, take a screenshot, and pick a color in the screen by simply calling the proper portals, with the bonus that the user will be able to select if they want the entire screen, a specific window, or a specific area to be recorded/captured and whether the cursor should be shown or not.
Heck, even TeamViewer can be as this restricted without losing any functionality if they use the Screen Cast portal which allows apps to mirror input from a remote device! They would of course need the network permission, but that's still safe.
Does all of this require flatpack specific APIs?
Yes in the sense that the APIs were made because of flatpak, but not in the sense that devs would need to keep two separate code paths for flatpak vs non-flatpak - portals work everywhere.
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It's nice to see good app security being praised. Sometimes it feels like some people on lemmy (and the fediverse) throw security to the wind.
Like one time I had heard someone over on Mastodon say that they thought that HTTPS was too overused and shouldn't have been everywhere because it makes older apps unable to access sites and also made adblocking just ever so slightly harder.
Which yeah, I love adblockers, but I'm definitely not comfortable with all traffic having to go unencrypted just for it.
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This is useful for proprietary software.
As well as FOSS too. Sandboxing is a security standard that should be followed by every software how open their code may be.
What is this? A solitaire game?
This could well be an advanced video editor or an office suite if they take full advantage of the portals API without losing any functionality. Well, they can have the network permission, it would still be safe anyway.
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Does it have to be sandboxed?
An app should not be able to access stuff the user did not consent to letting access.
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