[Elementary-dev-community] elementary's path forward for application containment and security.
Hello all, I recently have taken an interest in some of the containment and security features being developed for Ubuntu touch, as well as Lennart Poettering's plans for containment on GNOME. One of the recurring aspects that I see is a Content Hub (Ubuntu) or application Portals (GNOME) system. Both of these have remarkable similarity (in concept) to elementary's Contractor. Although many of you most likely did not foresee Contractor's role in security when it was created, it undoubtedly does have one. By delegating out responsibilities (such as, say, printing), Contractor allows for the removal of privileges from an application. If all applications are using the print contract, there is no need for those applications to have the capability to use the printer. By extending Contractor's scope (or moving to another service) further containment, as well as better features, is possible. Specifically, returning data, instead of handing them off, will allow for increased consolidation of privileges. The open and save GTK file dialogs are great example. If apps use contracts to perform these functions, they do not need to be given the privilege of directly reading or writing to the user's documents, pictures, emails, etc. Another good example is retrieving a profile photo. Instead of having every social media app be able to directly access the webcam, they could ask Contractor for a photo, and contractor could give the webcam option. These are the changes/additions that I think could make this possible: * returning data instead of just handing it off * ability to call a contract by name (e.g. Print or OpenFile) * passing / returning more types of data: not just files, but also strings, booleans, or URLs Before I go into detail about how I have been thinking about exposing this functionality, I would like to hear all of your thoughts about the merit of these changes, and if any of you would like to develop these things with me (heads up: I suck at programming :). Lennart Poettering's presentation of portals at GUADEC 2013, starting at 35:00. Ubuntu Mobile's Content Hub. Thank you very much for reading, -- Cameron Norman -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Elementary-dev-community] elementary's path forward for application containment and security.
Hey Cameron, I've been thinking about app containment too and I know I feel better on iOS that apps have to ask my permission to use things like location services. I think it would be worth looking at the solutions from both Canonical and GNOME first before we go building our own solution. Cheers, Daniel Foré elementaryos.org On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Cameron Norman camerontnor...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I recently have taken an interest in some of the containment and security features being developed for Ubuntu touch, as well as Lennart Poettering's plans for containment on GNOME. One of the recurring aspects that I see is a Content Hub (Ubuntu) or application Portals (GNOME) system. Both of these have remarkable similarity (in concept) to elementary's Contractor. Although many of you most likely did not foresee Contractor's role in security when it was created, it undoubtedly does have one. By delegating out responsibilities (such as, say, printing), Contractor allows for the removal of privileges from an application. If all applications are using the print contract, there is no need for those applications to have the capability to use the printer. By extending Contractor's scope (or moving to another service) further containment, as well as better features, is possible. Specifically, returning data, instead of handing them off, will allow for increased consolidation of privileges. The open and save GTK file dialogs are great example. If apps use contracts to perform these functions, they do not need to be given the privilege of directly reading or writing to the user's documents, pictures, emails, etc. Another good example is retrieving a profile photo. Instead of having every social media app be able to directly access the webcam, they could ask Contractor for a photo, and contractor could give the webcam option. These are the changes/additions that I think could make this possible: * returning data instead of just handing it off * ability to call a contract by name (e.g. Print or OpenFile) * passing / returning more types of data: not just files, but also strings, booleans, or URLs Before I go into detail about how I have been thinking about exposing this functionality, I would like to hear all of your thoughts about the merit of these changes, and if any of you would like to develop these things with me (heads up: I suck at programming :). Lennart Poettering's presentation of portals at GUADEC 2013, starting at 35:00. Ubuntu Mobile's Content Hub. Thank you very much for reading, -- Cameron Norman -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Elementary-dev-community] elementary's path forward for application containment and security.
Yes, I can definitely see how much this would expand Contractor's scope, but it is possible that we could engage with the GNOME community to work on Contractor, since it does not seem like Lennart Poettering has begun the portals work. Content Hub seems to be already developed, but its API is QML, so a GObject wrapper is probably necessary (maybe in Granite?). -- Cameron Norman El Tue, 18 de Mar 2014 a las 6:39 PM, Daniel Foré dan...@elementaryos.org escribió: Hey Cameron, I've been thinking about app containment too and I know I feel better on iOS that apps have to ask my permission to use things like location services. I think it would be worth looking at the solutions from both Canonical and GNOME first before we go building our own solution. Cheers, Daniel Foré elementaryos.org On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Cameron Norman camerontnor...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I recently have taken an interest in some of the containment and security features being developed for Ubuntu touch, as well as Lennart Poettering's plans for containment on GNOME. One of the recurring aspects that I see is a Content Hub (Ubuntu) or application Portals (GNOME) system. Both of these have remarkable similarity (in concept) to elementary's Contractor. Although many of you most likely did not foresee Contractor's role in security when it was created, it undoubtedly does have one. By delegating out responsibilities (such as, say, printing), Contractor allows for the removal of privileges from an application. If all applications are using the print contract, there is no need for those applications to have the capability to use the printer. By extending Contractor's scope (or moving to another service) further containment, as well as better features, is possible. Specifically, returning data, instead of handing them off, will allow for increased consolidation of privileges. The open and save GTK file dialogs are great example. If apps use contracts to perform these functions, they do not need to be given the privilege of directly reading or writing to the user's documents, pictures, emails, etc. Another good example is retrieving a profile photo. Instead of having every social media app be able to directly access the webcam, they could ask Contractor for a photo, and contractor could give the webcam option. These are the changes/additions that I think could make this possible: * returning data instead of just handing it off * ability to call a contract by name (e.g. Print or OpenFile) * passing / returning more types of data: not just files, but also strings, booleans, or URLs Before I go into detail about how I have been thinking about exposing this functionality, I would like to hear all of your thoughts about the merit of these changes, and if any of you would like to develop these things with me (heads up: I suck at programming :). Lennart Poettering's presentation of portals at GUADEC 2013, starting at 35:00. Ubuntu Mobile's Content Hub. Thank you very much for reading, -- Cameron Norman -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Elementary-dev-community] elementary's path forward for application containment and security.
The earlier implementation IIRC worked in the following way. App - contractor [give me a list if programs that handle file type x] - [program a b ... ..] App asks the user to select one or selects one itself and App - Contractor [program Id x, for file/uri y] - [command string] App executes this using execv or something similar. The '-' is for dbus function calls and '-' for return. Dbus is just a protocol for doing interprocess communication so a program/script can use contractor if it can use dbus. -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Elementary-dev-community] elementary's path forward for application containment and security.
I guess what I do not understand is how the application gets the data by executing the command. What I see in that implementation is simply a return of a command to run with an existing file as an argument, instead of a way to retrieve a new file. The difference is that the former says I have a type, what can I do with it? while the latter says I want to do something with a type, how/where can I get one?. El Tue, 18 de Mar 2014 a las 8:45 PM, Akshay Shekher voldyman...@gmail.com escribió: The earlier implementation IIRC worked in the following way. App - contractor [give me a list if programs that handle file type x] - [program a b ... ..] App asks the user to select one or selects one itself and App - Contractor [program Id x, for file/uri y] - [command string] App executes this using execv or something similar. The '-' is for dbus function calls and '-' for return. Dbus is just a protocol for doing interprocess communication so a program/script can use contractor if it can use dbus. -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Elementary-dev-community] elementary's path forward for application containment and security.
Contractor only implements the first one it does not fetch data for an app, it just enables the application to send its data to another application for further work. The latter would require more work on the 3rd party application while the current setup just needs a contract file and everything else works. On Mar 19, 2014 9:59 AM, Cameron Norman camerontnor...@gmail.com wrote: I guess what I do not understand is how the application gets the data by executing the command. What I see in that implementation is simply a return of a command to run with an existing file as an argument, instead of a way to retrieve a new file. The difference is that the former says I have a type, what can I do with it? while the latter says I want to do something with a type, how/where can I get one?. El Tue, 18 de Mar 2014 a las 8:45 PM, Akshay Shekher voldyman...@gmail.com escribió: The earlier implementation IIRC worked in the following way. App - contractor [give me a list if programs that handle file type x] - [program a b ... ..] App asks the user to select one or selects one itself and App - Contractor [program Id x, for file/uri y] - [command string] App executes this using execv or something similar. The '-' is for dbus function calls and '-' for return. Dbus is just a protocol for doing interprocess communication so a program/script can use contractor if it can use dbus. -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
