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Comment by elehack | Hacker News Reader

I simultaneously welcome and fear this development.

It's a great move for security, as a well-configured SELinux deploy can provide much finer-grained access control than standard Unix permissions (although, given that Android uses the Unix user & permission model a bit abnormally, I don't know if it will bring benefit over that or not).

OTOH, for locked devices, it gives vendors more tools to prevent rooting.

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What's abnormal about the way Android uses the Unix user and permissions model?

For a start, it uses a special group to denote 'this process can access the internet', requiring a kernel patch: http://elinux.org/Android_Security#Paranoid_network-ing

Don't they make each application you use run with it's own user?

Yes. I guess that's what the grandparent means. I don't find it abnormal, it's a very good practice - create user accounts for public-facing processes and give them as minimal rights as possible. Still, the possibility to somehow break out and gain root exists.

It is unusual in that usually applications meant to be consumed locally by the owner of the device are not considered "public-facing". It is something usually done with servers or daemons, not web browsers and text editors.

Yeah, I figured that is what was being referred to...it didn't strike me as abnormal though, but I guess it is. In practice this hasn't caused me any problems while developing on Android.

Anyone else negatively impacted by this?

Didn't intend to imply anything negative by "abnormal". It just isn't the "traditional" way to use processes for a user-facing, semi-desktop system. But given Android's special-purpose, single-user nature, it is a perfectly logical system (and quite clever, really). It just isn't the way users are used e.g. on my Fedora laptop.

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