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Document Flatpak's threat model #216

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strugee opened this issue Jul 5, 2020 · 1 comment
Open

Document Flatpak's threat model #216

strugee opened this issue Jul 5, 2020 · 1 comment

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@strugee
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strugee commented Jul 5, 2020

Flatpak's documentation should explicitly document what the threat model is, particularly for updates. For example, AFAICT:

  • Flatpak's local sandbox assumes that a malicious or otherwise compromised application cannot exploit a security vulnerability in the monolithic Linux kernel to break out of the sandbox
  • Flatpak's update system does not protect against an adversary who is able to compromise repository signing keys and perform network interception on the connection to the repository (for example, to present a specifically targeted user a modified view of the repo)
  • Flatpak is unable to prevent denial-of-service attacks where users are prevented from contacting the repo to receive (security) updates
  • Etc. (https://theupdateframework.io/ has thought through and written about a lot of these scenarios)
@TheHooly
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TheHooly commented May 4, 2023

Seeing how this is still open, here are my observations of what is evidently NOT in Flatpak's threat model:

  • Actively malicious repos
  • Benevolent, but compromised repos
  • Actively malicious apps that declared filesystem=home/host, device=all, etc.
  • Benevolent but vulnerable apps that declared the above permissions
  • Malicious or vulnerable apps with the socket=x11 or network permission while a Flatpak with the above permissions, or an unconfined app that is using X11 is running simultaneously (regardless of whether X11 or Wayland is used for the desktop)
  • Users using Flatpak under an X11 session
  • Users using Flatpak with the PulseAudio sound server
  • Apps snooping on the microphone via PulseAudio, regardless of whether PulseAudio or PipeWire is being used

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