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Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

obsidian.md

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Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#221

Post by esseph »

s_ting765 wrote: post #156
esseph wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using a flatpak, that's not actually the case. It would have very restricted access to the point where you even would have to explicitly give it access to user /home.

You're wrong. The obsidian flatpak ships by default with access to /home. https://github.com/flathub/md.obsidian.Obsidian/blob/5e594a4...

Interesting, I thought I had to turn that on for Obsidian!

The first time I started installing flatpaks I ran into a bit of permission / device isolation trouble and ever since then, I use flatseal after installing an app to make sure it actually has access to things.

I guess I misremembered in the case of Obsidian.

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#222

Post by esseph »

pipes wrote: post #146
esseph wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, what? I'm not claiming it's a security feature of Obsidian, I'm saying it's a consequence of running a flatpak - and in this situation it could be advantageous for those interested.

Sorry, it genuinely sounded to me like you were saying that it's not a problem because flat pack.

No, lol

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#223

Post by tlavoie »

debugnik wrote: post #175
tlavoie wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see software adopt strong capabilities-based models that enforce boundaries even within parts of a program. That is, with the principle of least authority (POLA), code that you call is passed only the capabilities you wish (e.g. opening a file, or a network socket), and not everything that the current process has access to. Thomas Leonard's post ( https://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2023/04/26/lambda-capabilit…

> OCaml's newer Eio effect system Eio is an IO library out of many competing ones, not OCaml's effect system. The capabilities are an Eio thing, not an effects thing.

Gotcha, thanks!

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#224

Post by cptnmrvl »

deafpolygon wrote: post #176
aucisson_masque wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there is a better alternative you’re left with electron. Nothing come close to obsidian.

There are better alternatives. It's just that people have convinced themselves they need the features Obsidian offers - because it makes them feel smart and important. At the end of the day, you're just taking notes. If you write a journal, don't put it in something like Obsidian. Even Apple Notes is better (in security, privacy, etc) in this regards.

How do I use Apple Notes cross-platform?

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#225

Post by qbit42 »

ibash wrote: post #87
gejose wrote: post #16

This is one way to look at it, but ignores the fact that most users use third party community plugins. Obsidian has a truly terrible security model for plugins. As I realized while building my own, Obsidian plugins have full, unrestricted access to all files in the vault. Obsidian could've instead opted to be more 'batteries-included', at the cost of more development effort, but instead leaves this to the community,…

> Obsidian plugins have full, unrestricted access to all files in the vault. Unless something has changed, it's worse than that. Plugins have unrestricted access to any file on your machine. When I brought this up in discord a while back they brushed it aside.

Is this true on Mac? Usually I am notified when programs request access outside the normal sandboxed or temp folders. Not sure how that works in any detail though.

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#226

Post by lioeters »

johnisgood wrote: post #164
dotancohen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell it to us! Why do you use specifically firejail? There are so many options, from so many different security perspectives, that analysis paralysis is a real issue.

I feel like I should keep track of all my comments on HN because I remember writing a lengthy comment on firejail more than once. I cannot keep doing this. :D For user-space, there is usually bubblewrap vs. firejail. I have not personally used bubblewrap, so I cannot comment on that, but firejail is great at what it does. The last comment was about restricting clipboard access to either X11 or Wayland which is possib…

> bubblewrap vs. firejail

In case anyone else is curious, I found the following comparison in bubblewrap's repo.

- https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap#related-project-com...

I'm gonna try both and see which one I like. Thanks for this info! You're sure living up to your user name there. (:

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#227

Post by maxbond »

kid64 wrote: post #86
freddie_mercury wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Obsidian for years without a single 3rd party plugin. It is possible to make your same point without histrionic excess.

Yeah, this is always the response. Usability can be assessed objectively, so you just have low standards.

A more charitable interpretation would be that that have different needs. My keyboard costs more than my computer, but most people probably spend $15-$50 on a keyboard. Even my mouse is well outside that range. Do I have high standards or do I have tendonitis?

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#228

Post by Jeff_Brown »

gejose wrote: post #16

This is one way to look at it, but ignores the fact that most users use third party community plugins. Obsidian has a truly terrible security model for plugins. As I realized while building my own, Obsidian plugins have full, unrestricted access to all files in the vault. Obsidian could've instead opted to be more 'batteries-included', at the cost of more development effort, but instead leaves this to the community,…

Among others, this is a big reason I want effect systems to gain more attention. After having seen them, the idea that in most languages, the only option is that any function can do anything without keeping track of what it affects in its type signature is bonkers to me.

Re: Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks

#229

Post by abdullahkhalids »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #173
Mikhail_K wrote: post #169

[flagged]

It also looks and feels the exact same on every platform I use it on and natively supports accessibility.

It's amazing how Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc can collaborate to come up with web standards, so they can ship browsers that display apps/webpages pretty much the same across multiple platforms. But Microsoft, Apple, Canonical, Google, etc can't collaborate to come up with apis that allow everyone to make desktop apps once and they display mostly the same on all platforms.
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