11–20 of 76 posts
Could someone more knowledgeable comment?
[1]: http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2015/02/17/first-fully-sandboxe...
In a recent article on sandboxing in linux [1] it was mentioned that "X11 is impossible to secure". I'm not sure how deep that goes, or whether it's relevant to what's been done here. Could someone more knowledgeable comment? [1]: http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2015/02/17/first-fully-sandboxe...
This is not sandboxing. Quite the opposite, this gives the apps root access: First of all, X11 is completely unsecure, the "sandboxed" app has full access to every other X11 client. Thus, its very easy to write a simple X app that looks for say a terminal window and injects key events (say using Xtest extension) in it to type whatever it wants. Here is another example that sniffs the key events, including when you un…
The need for stuff like Docker is an admission that OS privilege isolation and resource management is woefully inadequate.
This is not sandboxing. Quite the opposite, this gives the apps root access: First of all, X11 is completely unsecure, the "sandboxed" app has full access to every other X11 client. Thus, its very easy to write a simple X app that looks for say a terminal window and injects key events (say using Xtest extension) in it to type whatever it wants. Here is another example that sniffs the key events, including when you un…
lol Alex I didn't give people commands to remove their root filesystem ;) also thanks for the overlayfs patch its amazing
Once you have the images running the code in them could easily break out of the container via X11, and do things like sniff all keyboard events and inject events into any app.
Of course, the apps you put in the images probably are not doing that. But people need to be aware that this is not a sandbox they can run untrusted code in.
Are Docker containers actually sensibly secure as sandboxes? I thought there were still some gaps that needed to be closed in the underlying tech for it to be as safe as virtualization?
And as another commenter pointed out, you can't give a user permission to actually start a docker container without also giving them root access to the host.
[1] https://docs.docker.com/articles/security/ [2] http://lwn.net/Articles/626665/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol Alex I didn't give people commands to remove their root filesystem ;) also thanks for the overlayfs patch its amazing
Not sure what you mean, any user with access to docker can run processes as root, with any part of the host system mounted into the container. Now, that access was not added by you, but its required to be able to run your images. Once you have the images running the code in them could easily break out of the container via X11, and do things like sniff all keyboard events and inject events into any app. Of course, the…
In a recent article on sandboxing in linux [1] it was mentioned that "X11 is impossible to secure". I'm not sure how deep that goes, or whether it's relevant to what's been done here. Could someone more knowledgeable comment? [1]: http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2015/02/17/first-fully-sandboxe...
People have tried to make it more secure in various ways (trusted X, selinux X), but it is impossible because so much of the way X does things like DnD, cut-and-paste, window managers, etc that its just not possible to separate clients from each other without the entire thing breaking.