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Imagin an OS where applications/serices each get their own mini-filesystem, without ability to access each other's data.

OS X does this for sandboxed apps:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Securi...

All apps from the App Store are sandboxed.



What I meant is the app/service isolation on the OS level. It should not apply just to a subset of apps, but to each and every process that runs on a device.


Because then every application would be an island and useless.

Red Hat Linux tried a variation of this with the SELinux policy that preceded the 'targeted' policy (I forgot its name). Processes that did not have a policy adding permissions would be allowed to virtually read/write nothing.

The net result was that nearly everyone switched off SELinux.

Afterwards, Red Hat worked in the opposite direction. In the so-called 'targeted' policy processes are allowed to do what a normal UNIX process is allowed to do, unless there is a policy defined for them. Since they provide policies for commonly used daemons it adds security, while not making life too hard for sysadmins. Net result: most people keep SELinux enabled and have safer systems.




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