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I think it is unfortunate how many resources are put into making things secure with TPM's and how little resource is put into basically having secure and simple sandboxing...

All I really want is a computer that allows me to fully control the permissions and filesystem access of all the programs that I manually install on my system. Almost every program (in my case) needs 0 filesystem access outside of what it installed itself and shouldn't be looking or snooping at anything that isn't in its own process space.

I want a clear and simple way to limit the blast radius of how badly a program could actually screw up my system or have access to my files.

I recently experienced the opposite of this on Android, where I tried to install a very well reviewed ebook reader called MoonReader. But MoonReader seems to require complete access to every file on my Android device to work correctly. That is insane. I looked it up a bit more and it seems that Google has simplified (or something) permissions, but now there isn't much choice other than asking for full file access (I just want to give it access to one directory).

Anywho, just a minor vent, that we are insisting that the only way to make things secure is this sort of attestation path, but we don't spend any energy just making it possible to limit the blast radius of software on most OS'.



Another simple permission is network access. Why can't I restrict, say, a calculator app from accessing the internet on either iOS or Android?


How else are they going to get their “analytics” if they prompt permission for network access?


Its not 100% what you're looking for. Probably an 80% case..

But try looking into QubesOS. You create domains where applications can do whatever in the domain (a contained VM). So your personal domain is separate from your bank domain, which is separate from your media domain.

Of course, domains themselves can do naughty things. But they cant cross over to others.

And system resources are a separate domain, as is networking.

Some downsides - gaming is a no go mostly. And if you do SDR stuff, the USB domain is a heavy hit on performance. You really need dedicated machines for those things.


if you are working with Linux, then using flatseal, you can configure permissions for flatpack applications.

In which folders it can hide, which data to access, and which hardware resources to use.


Capability-based security and the principle of least privilege/authority...they become more relevant by the day.




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