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anfedorov | 7 years ago

Why is it an obviously bad idea? In light of the work on NaCL, is there still no way you can imagine it could ever work?

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pjc50|7 years ago

What does NaCL have to do with this, it's a cryptography library?

The issue is that 99.99% of USB devices aren't designed with the possibility of hostile payloads coming from the host, so the security rests entirely on the webusb permission dialog. Which should be presented as "grant this website administrative access to your computer" but isn't.

anfedorov|7 years ago

Could the browser create a tight whitelist of payloads that are definitely not hostile, then expand it slowly to add functionality?

myWindoonn|7 years ago

Native Client had layered sandboxes and was still exploited. I suspect that sandboxing, in general, is not right; we must find safety and correctness by construction, not by ad-hoc rules or policy or permissions.

baybal2|7 years ago

This is a million dollar question, but it was answered long time ago: there is no substitute for a programmer who knows what he is doing.

This is something most companies can't do. Small co., can pull it out that for some times, but as companies grow, the temptation to "simply make money" overwhelms even most principled person.