logoalt Hacker News

josephgtoday at 4:08 AM0 repliesview on HN

I mostly agree but ...

> In the same way someone working on software shouldn't be required to use an end-user consumption system when they are at work.

I'm worried that many software developers (including me, a lot of the time) will only enable security after exhausting all other options. So long as there's a big button labeled "Developer Mode" or "Run as Admin" which turns off all the best security features, I bet lots of software will require that to be enabled in order to work.

Apple has quite impressive frameworks for application sandboxing. Do any apps use them? Do those DAWs that sound engineers use run VST plugins in a sandbox? Or do they just dyld + call? I bet most of the time its the latter. And look at this Notepad++ attack. The attack would have been stopped dead if the update process validated digital signatures. But no, it was too hard so instead they got their users' computers hacked.

I'm a pragmatist. I want a useful, secure computing environment. Show me how to do that without annoying developers and I'm all in. But I worry that the only way a proper capability model would be used would be by going all in.