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Comment by bita_nidir | Hacker News Reader

Related: could we please stop, by default, allowing software to:

  a) access all your files, and
  b) roam the internet at will.

That was somewhat OK in the 80s, but it hasn't been since.

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These days, most things that I run that aren't from my distro's repos get their own bubblewrap. On top of this, I use opensnitch. Even if I trust the application (uncommon), I never trust npm, pypi, etc. any longer. It's tedious to set this up and OSes should be helping make this easy.

Agreed. Programs like Zoom, Steam, and other closed source "apps" should always run either in a separate user account or in a bubblewrap.

I agree. But sometimes I struggle with finding the right files under /dev or /sys so that the necessary hardware is accessible to the program. Is there some documentation that gives a good overview over the different device and system files? For example, if a program wants to use my web cam, how would I figure out which files to mount?

You may need a general knowledge in device and device drivers in Linux (the BSDs behave the same but follows a simpler approach). Basically the naming scheme is based on the driver name with numbers and letters appended for device ordering. So sda1 means scsi disk (sd driver), a for the first one, and 1 for the first partition. Linux added a few folders and scheming for better interactivity.

/sys is powered by sysfs, which is actually a database as file and folders. OpenBSD doesn’t have it (and /proc too), so if you need to interact with kernel objects, you need to use C and the system library. But on Linux, you can do a lot with basic read and write on files.

An LLM can be useful to help you figure out stuff like that.

I wouldn't mind, but there needs to be a way to remove the "training wheels".

I don't want my computer to always be as closed and restrictive as an iPhone. That's good sometimes and perfect for some users, but not for everyone or all the time.

Of course, I was just saying "by default". You should be able to allow any access as you want, give it your old socks or granny. Just not by default.

Ironically, the closed and restrictive iOS and Android go then out of their way to make restricting Internet access hard

That would make all the spying and surveillance harder and thereby reduce profits. And profit reduction is really the worst attack risk of all.

Hard for you to restrict access of third parties. Easy for you to restrict your own.

On GrapheneOS there is a Network permission to forbid access completely. Or you can also use something like NetGuard[1], to have more flexible controls.

[1]: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard

The internet permission never meaningfully protected anything on stock android since you could always just send an intent to the browser with the payload stored in the GET parameters.

I have yet to see a single report of an app utilizing this to circumvent lack of internet access

Agreed. I mean, AppArmor and SELinux exist to control file access, perhaps OSes should put more effort into user-friendly overlays to control processes and have audits to warn users when a piece of software has full system access.

As far as network control... We have open-source blacklists for various malicious websites. Perhaps we should also have "known-good" site whitelists and have OS-level blocking for that by default. Like, OSes running DNS-sinkholing of StevenBlack malware lists, and the option to enable "known-good" whitelists as well. Having a hosts file of 450,000 entries to sinkhole can bog down an interface coming up reliably... that process needs optimized.

There's a lot of money in the enterprise world doing similar things.

SELinux is what Android uses internally anyway.

The problem is, peoples files are too valuable - even to the OS vendors - and also, there are simply too many valuable people on the Internet without the willpower to know how to manage their own filesystem.

If the OS vendors are motivated to harvest peoples data, why on Earth would they be motivated to make sure nobody can harvest peoples data?

In 2026, we still don't have a major OS that sandboxes everything.

Googlebooks, which start shipping this month, will run a fork of Android 17, which sandboxes every app.

Also, some people use an iPad Pro connected to a USB hub connected to a monitor, keyboard, etc, as their daily driver.

Also, doesn't MacOS sandbox most apps?

> Googlebooks, which start shipping this month, will run a fork of Android 17, which sandboxes every app.

This app needs access to all your files to function.

This thread veered off the top of the Telegram Desktop app before I jumped in.

QubesOS? You can have a separate VM per application if you like.

Yes, this is exactly how Qubes OS works.

In the Linux Desktop space Flatpaks are applications distributed as a single file, which run in isolated kernel namespaces. They do come with some growing pains however, like cross-process communication or screen capture. But I like the direction and they have quite a lot of traction.

Not if I have anything to say about it. I want programs on my computing device to be able to access files and roam the internet at free will. In fact, I insist on it.

Yes, who needs protected memory? DOS programs were awesome. Any program can overwrite any other! We just ask their developers to make them behave nicely

Unix file protection with owner/group is OK too. But would you create additional users and groups for running software? With OpenBSD’s pf, you can add network rules for each user.

Please read my comment again, it was about access to files and the internet. Protected memory is not related to that.

The analogy is with protected memory. Files need to be protected, too - from programs overwriting each other’s files, no?

Now I understand the misunderstanding here. I'm fine with protecting everything by user-chosen permissions. As long as the end user has full control over them, file permissions, access control lists, and fine-grained internet controls are perfectly fine. My operating system has all of that. What I rigorously reject is when the makers of an operating system restrict access without giving the end user full control over everything. That should in my opinion be prohibited. The user's full control must also be easy to exert to prevent malicious compliance.

So maybe I misunderstood you and there is no disagreement at all. Of course, I think file permissions and protected memory can make sense.

When you said "to be able to .. at free will", I (and maybe many others) assumed that to mean that you wanted no way to limit them at all, to always give the programs free reign no matter what, and that's the part I disagreed with, but it sounds like that's not really what you meant now.

At the same time it sounds like you may have skipped over OP's "by default" phrasing.

I am in agreement. I am always curious as to the solution because VMs are not the solution and zero knowledge is helpful but not quite there.

VMs can help a lot, see what Qubes OS does

Microsoft wanted to, but people on HN and elsewhere started screaming bloody murder

> That was somewhat OK in the 80s,

No it wasn't.

macOS does it pretty well, right ?

Among the old school desktop OSes it's one of the better options, but it still has a long way to go compared to mobile OSes.

Half the problem is that too many people rely on commercial software that will crap itself if it doesn't have access to what it wants whenever it wants. If, say, Adobe CC stops working after a new macOS release because macOS won't allow it to litter the filesystem any more, the one taking the heat won't be Adobe (which shouldn't have been doing that in the first place) but rather Apple.

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