Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system
From: Timo Sirainen <tss () iki fi>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 04:28:38 +0300
On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 03:27, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 02:00:39 +0300, Timo Sirainen <tss () iki fi> said:http://iki.fi/tss/security/friendly-secure-os.html I'd like to hear comments about it. I hope it's easily enough understandable, it's really just intended to give some larger ideas and let you figure out the details.*sniff* *sniff*.. Do I smell the presence of Java here? ;) (You've basically described the Java sandbox...)
Well, yes. The sandbox part is very much like with Java, except it would be enforced by operating system rather than JVM. But the sandboxing itself wasn't the only point - sandboxing isn't useful if most software requires access outside the safe sandbox. You really want to have a system where you don't get constantly questions if something is allowed or not, but you still should be able to run pretty much any kind of software you run into.
Have you taken a look at Sun's recent Java-based desktop? Is that what you're thinking of? http://wwws.sun.com/software/learnabout/desktopsystem/index.html
That doesn't seem to be Java-only desktop. For example it includes Star Office. Security holes in Star Office would still allow full access to user's files. I'd want a system where I can run any software I want and reasonably expect that it can't do any harm besides consuming CPU and memory. Also classifying software simply to "trusted" and "untrusted" isn't enough. I don't want my "trusted" web browser accessing files in my home directory (due to security holes in it) unless I specifically tell it to upload or download them. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Friendly and secure desktop operating system Timo Sirainen (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Timo Sirainen (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Gary Flynn (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Timo Sirainen (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Andrew Clover (Oct 14)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Timo Sirainen (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Valdis . Kletnieks (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system David (Oct 13)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Peter Busser (Oct 16)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Ondrej Krajicek (Oct 16)
- Re: Friendly and secure desktop operating system Timo Sirainen (Oct 13)