Re: Sandboxing. WTF?
Re: Sandboxing. WTF?
- Subject: Re: Sandboxing. WTF?
- From: Mikkel Islay <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 16:17:28 +0200
On 29 May 2012, at 01:59, Graham Cox wrote:
> Nobody has written a better analysis, critique and alternative suggestion for sandboxing than Wil Shipley: http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/11/real-security-in-mac-os-x-requires.html
An interesting post, but his arguments against sandboxing, I think.
Shipley argues from the pretense that App Sandboxing is a technology intended to shield the user form the intentions of the software developer. That is of course not the case. From the docs: "App Sandbox provides a last line of defense against stolen, corrupted, or deleted user data if malicious code exploits your app."
Of course App Sandboxing will have bugs, and no doubt someone might write an arbitrarily sophisticated malware app which could make it past the review, but is that an argument against sandboxing? It is intended to secure apps (and users) after deployment. Recently someone posted a link to a blogpost, describing manipulation of the ObjC-runtime to attack third-party apps on compromised iOS-devices. App sandboxing is meant to limit the effectiveness of that type of attack on OS X. Is that a important or credible type of attack on OS X? Shipley's arguments all but ignores that question.
The post makes a lot of the weaknesses of app curation, but they are besides the point. The (relative) merits of sandboxing remain the same, irrespective of whether it functions in conjunction with the App Store or not. The argument that app curation is imperfect, doesn't impact the efficacy of sandboxing against attacks against apps.
Using MacDefender as an example of malware, sandboxing does not deal with, is a bit of a straw man argument. MacDefender was a phishing scam. App Sandboxing is not particularly effective against programs designed to fool users into taking actions which are against their best interest. It was not really designed to be.
Mikkel
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