• folkrav
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    2 months ago

    That’s… quite the dedication. I personally just never downloaded things or ran random executables from porn sites, but hey… who am I to judge, I guess

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      There’s always a risk of JavaScript breaking out of the sandbox and crap like that. Browser vendors do their best to protect against things like that but security is often a trade-off for speed and people like fast software, not to mention browsers are huge and complex and they’re going to have vulnerabilities. A browser’s whole job is to execute remote untrusted code, do you trust it that much to be flawless?

      … I mean, I don’t but I use it anyway so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

          • PoolloverNathan@programming.dev
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            1 month ago

            Made a Nix library for this. For a simple setup you can just build this (untested) and run the result:

            import ./encase.nix {
              name = "firefox";
              rw.home.nathan = /home/nathan/home-for/firefox;
              # other dependencies it might need...
              tmp = /tmp; # fresh tmpfs for this sandbox
              network = true;
              command = pkgs.firefox;
            }
            

            It doesn’t have user isolation yet, so if it escapes the browser and the chroot (which doesn’t have a /proc unless you set proc = /proc;, and runs in a PID namespace either way) your files are still at risk. However, this is still pretty secure, and you can run the script itself as a different user (it creates a new UID namespace so chrooting can be done without root).

      • folkrav
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        2 months ago

        I mean, yeah, sure. But at this point, if that’s really a worry, one should not trust any sandbox. OSes are huge and complex and will have vulnerabilities too. Hell, there could be a xz level backdoor currently in the wild and nobody knows any better lol

        • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          Right, that’s where OP comes in - most malware will be made for Windows, so if you visit such a malicious website, it’ll likely be inert under Linux!

          … I’m not saying this is a great reason to use Linux, but there’s at least a little bit of merit to it.