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by habitue 812 days ago
Depends. if the editor is given permission to edit files, like say, many people do `sudo helix` when they want to edit some system config file, you could imagine a rogue wasm plugin doing a lot of harm.

Sandboxing isn't magic, if you need the permissions to do something, then the things in the sandbox get access to them.
1 comments
yunohn 812 days ago
That’s not how the WASM sandbox usually works - it has a very limited API surface and can only take specified inputs.

https://docs.wasmtime.dev/security.html

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habitue 812 days ago
Right, but it can control the editor indirectly through that API surface, and the editor can write to the filesystem.

It's definitely more secure than running a non-sandboxed executable, but the entire point of a plugin is to have an effect on the editing process, and the entire point of the editor is to modify files on the filesystem. As long as that's true there's a casual mechanism for an untrusted plugin to do damage.

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