Show HN: Subgraph OS, the secure os | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Subgraph OS, the secure os

subgraph.com

16 pointsD3_4dl1N34 comments

Trying to achieve Qubes OS concepts with containers is a very hard task. Wondering how this can be achieved. Do they provide any paper or detailed view of the implementation?

Some questions:

  - Do they provide their own implementation of containers or
    rely on some already existing (docker, rkt, etc)?
  - How containers communicate? what protocol?
  - How filesystem is handled? Containers have volumes for file system sharing?
  - What's the plan for devices management? How my USB
    pendrive, speaker or webcam is available inside a 
    container?

Sandbox implementation is described here:

https://github.com/subgraph/oz/wiki/Oz-Technical-Details

I really liked the architecture, but I don't think container is a good name for the kind of isolation it has. For the machinery work as expected, the namespaced application must follow the Oz-rules/policies. Container nowadays are complete environments, everyone with different rootfs and so, very different of the kind of container required in subgraph. It can lead to misinterpretation, because I cannot reuse existent distros/rootfs and package managers to run other applications in subgraph. As I've understood, subgraph only bind-mount the common directories from host to the namespace mount point of process on top of a tmpfs. Hard to reuse an ubuntu app.

How persistent data will be managed isn't detailed in the document.

Seccomp-bfp is a good enhancement. It can really fix the well know security issue of docker when using volumes with write permissions.

Still wondering what's the plan for persistent data. If someone has more info, please share :)

Nice diagram, very pretty.

It's a bit less ambitious than it sounds, though, as it's not really a different operating system (such as sel4) but a Linux distribution with armouring, secure defaults, Tor, and some useful userland software. Running the PDF viewer in secure isolation is a nice touch.

It says that higher-level languages are preferred for the userland software but doesn't say which language?

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