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Comment by catdog | Hacker News Reader

Websites with hardware access? what could possibly go wrong?

Browsers already are a overly complex security nightmare. Moreover the recent example of this stupid but rather simple battery API has shown us several, some more and some less obvious ways of how it can be abused. But sure Google will implement WebUSB and all sort of other shit they may imagine, the others will follow as always. In the end the browser will finally be the OS in your OS but worse and with a huge attack surface.

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What's the alternative? If an app needs such functionality to work and it cannot work within a browser, the user will have to install a native app which aren't nearly as well sandboxed right now (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Most importantly, as a user, don't install programs which can't be trusted because sandboxing is no magic bullet and will never be. In addition to that better redirect the work that would go into these browser features to improve the native sandboxing mechanisms of the operating systems.

> Most importantly, as a user, don't install programs which can't be trusted because sandboxing is no magic bullet and will never be.

Perfect is the enemy of good! It's better than the alternative and that's all that matters.

Sure nothing is perfect and I did not say that we shouldn't improve sandboxing but I do not think that moving everything into the browser is the better alternative. The problem doesn't get easier only because it's in the browser and as a nice topping every random website is now free to try to break the sandbox.

UWP is sandboxed, Mac App Store apps are sandboxed, Mac apps from outside the store can opt-in to sandboxing, flatpaks are sandboxed, snaps are sandboxed.

In terms of maturity, all of these techniques are probably more mature than any WebUSB/Browser hardware access thing/abysmal-of-the-day.

> > Websites with hardware access?

> the alternative? [...] install a native app which aren't nearly as well sandboxed right now (Windows, Mac, Linux).

err, the sandboxing works because web APIs don't already expose things which are suggested to be exposed here. Exposing them will break that "sandbox", to a certain (major) degree, atleast.

Reading your comment on a Chromebook that hasn't failed me once including all the others i have had makes me scratch my head. If anything this, to me, seems the most secure approach compared to what's out there. Doesn't it make to you? A secure, lean Linux hosting a lean UI layer that sandboxes web and native apps.

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