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by ryandrake 676 days ago
Yea, I'd like to see a system where each application runs as its own user, especially third party applications not vetted by the OS vendor, the package manager and so on. Maybe this already exists--I think it would be a good step forward for security and privacy.

You can no longer trust 3rd party applications to stay in their lanes. Running an application with full access to everything that I as a user have access to seems insane in 2024. Ideally, I don't want a third party application to read or write anything outside of its "home directory" without my explicitly giving it permission. That includes files on my filesystem, network shares, hardware devices, everything.

3 comments

u would either need to statically includw everything in the binaries all the time causing huge files everywhere, or use something like bsd jails. both is doable. then it is still possible to access the kernel though. so its highly impractical. as other guy pointed out Android somewhat works like that, but lots of malicious programs also exist for that..
> Maybe this already exists

That's how Android works.

In the early days, nowadays not only it does that still, it also has LinuxSE and seccomp enabled, and Linux drivers are seen as legacy, modern drivers run out of process as well, on their own accounts, talking via Android IPC with the kernel.
Stop running 3rd party propietary crap. Problem solved. Better: separate your work, gaming/leisure and 'sensitiive' (banking) files with 3 different users.