I have a question about flatpak (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 weeks ago by BobGnarley@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I see that it can be slower because of having all the dependencies included with the flatpak itself instead of relying solely on whats installed on the system. I read that this means it isolates or sandboxes itself from the rest of the system.

Does this not mean that it can't infect the rest of the system even if it had malware?

I have seen people say that it isnt good for security because sometimes they force you to use a specific version of certain dependencies that often times are outdated but I'm wondering why that would matter if it was truly sandboxed and isolated.

Do they mean that installing flatpak itself is a security risk or that also specific flatpaks can be security risks themselves?

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[-] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The sandboxing isn't as much as, say, Docker containers. So I think access to memory and devices is still possible and can eventually get you access to the whole system. I would think.

And this isn't limited to flatpaks but I would assume Snaps as well, which some software is now delivered in that format by Canonical, even for server software.

That's interesting. I'll have to look deeper into that

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago

Docker is actually less secure from a sandboxing perspective as the docker daemon runs as root.

It would make more sense to compare to raw bubblewrap or podman.

this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024

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