Understanding the Orthogonal Relationship Between Memory Safety and Sandboxing in Linux Security
By
pizlonator
An everything bagel for the brain. Substantive, layered, well-seasoned.
Summary
The article discusses the relationship between memory safety and sandboxing in Linux security, explaining that they are orthogonal concepts that work best when combined. It clarifies that memory safety prevents certain types of vulnerabilities while sandboxing restricts what processes can do, but notes that sandboxes often have intentional holes for communication with privileged broker processes. The article warns that attackers can exploit memory safety bugs to make sandboxed processes send malicious messages to these brokers, potentially breaking through the sandbox. The key takeaway is that comprehensive security requires both memory safety and proper sandboxing implementation.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledMemory safety and sandboxing are two different things. It's reasonable to think of them as orthogonal: you could have memory safety but not be sandboxed, or you could be sandboxed but not memory safe.
In practice, sandboxes have holes by design. A typical sandbox allows the program to send and receive messages to broker processes that have higher privileges.
So, an attacker may first use a memory safety bug to make the sandboxed process send malicious messages, and then use those malicious messages to break into the brokers.
The best kind of defense is to have both a sandbox and memory safety.
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