Friday, October 22, 2010

amoebaOS and Security

Well developIT posted some information today on the forum, and I thought I would post it here since I think it is good to know, and also shows some things no one else has done. If you are a security freak, you must read:


"Regarding security, there are a number of things being addressed on this front. Right now, I'm working on improving security within the OS, which is being done by running applications in a sandbox. There are still more areas to cover, but things are already looking good.

One of the most important problems you run into when developing an online OS is the fact that all applications are inherently using the same presentation layer (the DOM) on the same page (even frames would be on the same domain, so direct DOM access to a parent page is trivial). So, everything must be abstracted. That means applications using addEventListener and createElement are actually using secured facades built on top of the browser's real DOM functions. I believe we are the only online Operating Systems that is even attempting to solve this important security issue.

So, I would say that as far as online Operating Systems go, amoebaOS is secure. It certainly is in terms of web applications, but strictly speaking of web OSes, I believe we are the furthest along in this area.

The amoebaOS filesystem does not currently have user-configurable file permissions. However, we use an onion-like filesystem that overlays various levels of the filesystem using preset permissions. That means your personal files (not just your home directory - 100% of your files) are kept separate from the read-only system files (root files), other users' files, and shared files. This type of architecture is not like that of a desktop filesystem, because we have the ability to work with files and their locations at a very high level of abstraction. We can do things like represent the same file with as multiple different locations, and even generate unique one-time public URLs with read and write access for any file in your account. The current filesystem is one of the newer parts of amoebaOS, and as such it is quite flexible."


-Jason Miller, developIT

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