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Comment by spansoa | Hacker News Reader

What if we had multiple sandboxes instead? Then we could make the rogue malware 'think' it has escaped by using a decoy environment, and then it has to break another sandbox. Having just one sandbox is a SPOF and once that's breached, it's fair game. (Good) security has always been about /layers/ of security.

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Is layering always more secure? Layering may create more complexity in the system overall (usually bad for security) and spreads efforts thinner if you are maintaining both sandboxes. What's the difference between good and bad layering?

> Layering may create more complexity in the system overall

Have you ever heard of the `swiss cheese method of security`, where each slice of cheese has a hole in it? The idea being: each slice may have a hole, but when sandwiched together, the route of entry is blocked. I've heard the adage: 'complexity enlarges the attack surface' before, but not in all cases especially. Sometimes security 'maxims' get in the way of security.

This wouldn't help, because malware developers have access to iOS and can see the implementation of multiple sandboxes.

Also it's fencepost security. Doing the exact same thing because "more is better" without a concrete reason why the additional copies would change the outcome. If the outer sandbox is the same as the inner one, why wouldn't the malware break through immediately? If it's different in some way, why not apply those additional mitigations to the inner one?

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