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How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

shopify.engineering

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Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#11

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #5

Technically you can accomplish the same thing using seccomp, I.e. the way most services run third party native code to process untrusted data, e.g. imagemagick. That’s what I would probably do since it’s more efficient and simpler. No need for a compilation step or an interpreter. No need to trust the (likely complex) webassembly runtime to be bug free. Edit: most responses are being made under the assumption that se…

There is a big difference between running "third party native code" that you have some level of trust of (eg: image magick) vs having customers upload code to your infrastructure.

In the latter case I'm not aware of a single service that uses seccomp to do this. The closest to a non WASM setup is either things like Firecracker or to enforce some sense of sandboxed language like JavaScript. Seccomp quite often plays a role in keeping those sandboxes safe, but it's generally not used to have people execute arbitrary binary blobs on SaaS.

Having people compile code to WASM to execute it in a sandbox is becoming quite widespread. Shopify is not the first company to do that.

Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#12

Post by croes »

xg15 wrote: post #7
CyberRabbi wrote: post #5

Technically you can accomplish the same thing using seccomp, I.e. the way most services run third party native code to process untrusted data, e.g. imagemagick. That’s what I would probably do since it’s more efficient and simpler. No need for a compilation step or an interpreter. No need to trust the (likely complex) webassembly runtime to be bug free. Edit: most responses are being made under the assumption that se…

I think WASM has the added benefit of being platform-independent - which is generally a good thing but can even be a security feature: With native code, even if run without privileges, you need to expose a lot of details about your hardware that malicious users could use to find vulnerabilities. With WASM, the host can keep the actual hardware architecture and even the actual machine code that is generated a secret.

Security by obscurity?

Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#13

Post by CyberRabbi »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11
CyberRabbi wrote: post #5

Technically you can accomplish the same thing using seccomp, I.e. the way most services run third party native code to process untrusted data, e.g. imagemagick. That’s what I would probably do since it’s more efficient and simpler. No need for a compilation step or an interpreter. No need to trust the (likely complex) webassembly runtime to be bug free. Edit: most responses are being made under the assumption that se…

There is a big difference between running "third party native code" that you have some level of trust of (eg: image magick) vs having customers upload code to your infrastructure. In the latter case I'm not aware of a single service that uses seccomp to do this. The closest to a non WASM setup is either things like Firecracker or to enforce some sense of sandboxed language like JavaScript. Seccomp quite often plays a…

> Having people compile code to WASM to execute it in a sandbox is becoming quite widespread. Shopify is not the first company to do that.

Whether or not a technical solution is good is not dependent on it being employed by other companies. Using seccomp to run untrusted code is a better solution than wasm because it’s less code and more efficient.

Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#15

Post by CyberRabbi »

feanaro wrote: post #9
CyberRabbi wrote: post #5

Technically you can accomplish the same thing using seccomp, I.e. the way most services run third party native code to process untrusted data, e.g. imagemagick. That’s what I would probably do since it’s more efficient and simpler. No need for a compilation step or an interpreter. No need to trust the (likely complex) webassembly runtime to be bug free. Edit: most responses are being made under the assumption that se…

Shopify is already a known seccomp user (for running Ruby in the mruby VM), so I think there's no reason to assume the WebAssembly runtime is not in a seccomp jail too.

That’s just redundant

Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#17

Post by enriquto »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #14

Could someone eligthen me. Why not just use JavaScript? It is being used by Cloudflare on the edge, and AWS lambda. Why need to go to WASM?

The issue is quite symmetrical, isn't it? Somebody could ask: why not use just WASM? Why need to go to JavaScript?

This is a better question, actually, if you already have a codebase in another language that can you can easily compile to wasm, but not to javascript.

Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#18

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #13
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between running "third party native code" that you have some level of trust of (eg: image magick) vs having customers upload code to your infrastructure. In the latter case I'm not aware of a single service that uses seccomp to do this. The closest to a non WASM setup is either things like Firecracker or to enforce some sense of sandboxed language like JavaScript. Seccomp quite often plays a…

> Having people compile code to WASM to execute it in a sandbox is becoming quite widespread. Shopify is not the first company to do that. Whether or not a technical solution is good is not dependent on it being employed by other companies. Using seccomp to run untrusted code is a better solution than wasm because it’s less code and more efficient.

> Whether or not a technical solution is good is not dependent on it being employed by other companies

You said it's state of the art and simpler as WASM. I'm not actually aware of a single company using seccomp for what Shopify is doing (letting people upload custom code) so I would be quite curious to hear who does.

Re: How Shopify Uses WebAssembly Outside of the Browser

#19

Post by devwastaken »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #13
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between running "third party native code" that you have some level of trust of (eg: image magick) vs having customers upload code to your infrastructure. In the latter case I'm not aware of a single service that uses seccomp to do this. The closest to a non WASM setup is either things like Firecracker or to enforce some sense of sandboxed language like JavaScript. Seccomp quite often plays a…

> Having people compile code to WASM to execute it in a sandbox is becoming quite widespread. Shopify is not the first company to do that. Whether or not a technical solution is good is not dependent on it being employed by other companies. Using seccomp to run untrusted code is a better solution than wasm because it’s less code and more efficient.

That's a pretty bold statement. I'd like to see an in depth analysis between the two before supporting that.
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