Native Client: Google's craziest idea yet

http://weblog.infoworld.com/fatalexception/archives/2008/12/native_client_g.html

by ccraigIW • 18 years ago

86 39 18 years ago

weblog.infoworld.com

Retric6• 18 years ago

Like VMware this is all based on problems with existing operating systems. I should be able to download, install, and run any application from anybody without compromising my system or adding much bloat. That's the real problem that needs to be solved and I think the first group that get's this working is going to become extremely wealthy.

PS: When you think about it VMware is one of the few operating systems that has real working security, but I wonder how much else an OS can do while still providing that level of safety and efficiency.

te_platt2• 18 years ago

"Any application" would have to include applications that compromise your system.

For example, suppose you want an application that deletes any files on your hard ending with tmp. I offer it for download, you get it, run it, like it. Now (just because I can) I change the application (without telling you) to delete all files ending with doc. You've been compromised.

stcredzero5• 18 years ago

If "Open File" (which may or may not mean a dialog) is a service provided by the Operating System, then there is no reason why a sandboxed application would have access to anything more than the particular file you have open.

People have been researching other security models for decades now. I'm afraid I have to say: they're way ahead of you!

Retric6• 18 years ago

What if no application could delete files?

I don't mind a program flagging them as unimportant but if I have enough space to restore any file deleted in the last month what's the problem? Toss in a wizard to restore things to before I installed that program and it becomes harder to damage the system. Heck, add a pop up if the OS wants to destroy a file that was marked as unimportant in the last month and it's going to become hard to damage the system like that. You can even treat updates like deletes where the OS protects the old state for a week / month / year.

tptacek2• 18 years ago

I'm not sure where you're coming up with this "real security of VMWare" idea:

(1) VMWare has had plenty of security problems, ranging from guest-hopping attacks to remote code execution.

(2) If VMWare is more resilient than Win2k3 or Linux, it's because VMWare does less and has less of an attack surface.

(3) In any realistic compute environment, VMWare adds security concerns; it doesn't subtract them. That's because you still care about the security of your guest OS, even when it's running underneath VMWare, because that's where your actual data lives.

Retric6• 18 years ago

I think of secuirty as a reasonable spectrium. I would like to be able to install software from my bank, a well known software company, and NBC without consern that they will corrupt my system. I don't really need a system that let's my bank run any hackers program on their servers without concern, but it's gotten to the point where I don't install software without a significant background check which is just silly.

old-gregg• 18 years ago

Security, just like privacy, is one of these things that generates a lot of noise and heat, yet only people with vested personal interests are really worried about it.

Users don't give a shit. I've seen tons of support emails confirming this. They will continue to download and launch viruses just because their friend who sent them an infectious link thought that sheep jumping from under your windows look funny. And they will disable any software jail that stands between them and the sheep or the singing cat photos.

Most security-minded consumer software only makes everything else work worse, slower and annoy the hell out of people. It saddens me enormously that everything but port #80 on the Internet is blocked, everything except HTTP is banned and most users of my application will be threatened and screamed at by their own computer simply for trying out what I'd built.

This security hysteria not only doesn't work, but it chokes the innovation, restricting us to sit forever in this little crippled world of Mozilla/IE/WebKit runtime with 90% of what a computer can do unavailable to us.

JVM has been around for nearly 15 years, being many times more powerful than Mozilla and WebKit's wildest dreams, yet it has failed outside of data centers because it never allowed OSX programmers to write true OSX programs or Windows programmers to write true Windows programs, and I see no reason why browser-based "boxes" will be different. And you need true OSX programs if you want the consumer market. For the enterprise - yes, they eat anything, users of enterprise software get paid to use that shit, but if you want software markets to strive, if you want people to open up their wallets, you'd have to do a lot better than that. Otherwise we'll be locked forever in this eyeball market of free crap supported by canadian pharmacy advertising.

Retric6• 18 years ago

Let's take the average user who goes to www.cwtv.com and installs a plug in to watch their videos. Now if it works that's great, but what if there are problems? What if you install an old game that messes with your system? What do they do next?

Users want the systems that "just work", so adding something as simple as an OS level uninstall that always worked would be a major boon that people would notice. Is it really that hard to build an OS that protects it's self from unintended harm? Plenty of people buy Ant Virus software for a wide range of reasons but it helps is enough to make the developer a lot of (Edit: Money).

PS: I am suggesting that VMware, Java and all the others don't own the market at this point. It's much like search before Google where it almost works, but nobody seems to be focusing on the real problems.

sfk3• 18 years ago

VMware has real security? I do not think that everyone agrees:

http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/Virtualization_Security

On a side note, Google has tried to hire Theo de Raadt. Perhaps they wanted him to work on this project.

rw• 18 years ago

Did they fail to hire him?

lazyant• 18 years ago

VMWare is an operating system? must be some stretch of the definition; it's a "Hypervisor" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor running on top of an existing operating system.

They do sell a "bare-metal" VMWare, based on Red Hat Linux for what I know.

Retric6• 18 years ago

I think ESXi server and VMware Infrastructure are both "bare-metal" but I don't use their tools so I don't really know.

swies• 18 years ago

The thread off this comment is a great, intelligent discussion of many of the issues we're dealing with at BaseShield (YCW08 - http://baseshield.com). Specifically where the balance between ease of use and security sits for normal users and how software installation would work in an ideal world.

Sorry for the self-promotion, but I'd love to talk more with any of you about how our product is hitting or missing on these points. I'm at pat -at- baseshield.com if you want to email.

Thanks!

zenocon• 18 years ago

Hi, I have a working prototype that aims to solve this problem, and a good partner with a good b-plan, and an initial system design. I would like to hook up with a few other talented individuals to get this done on the cheap. We've been told by many potential investors / VCs that the idea is fantastic, but they want a working beta first with customers. It is a chicken/egg problem right now. If you want to discuss ping me at davisford at gmail.

jamii• 18 years ago

In Sugar whenever you join a group activity the application is downloaded and run from the group. Whilst their security system is fairly untested I think that this is a more sensible model than moving everything into the browser.

There's some more information on the security system here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bitfrost

clay• 18 years ago

"this method leaves many handheld devices in the cold, including those based on Intel's ARM chips."

haha

jpd• 18 years ago

What's funny about that? It's a real issue and the first thing I thought of when I head them say "native x86". Consider that there are also netbooks that have ARM architecture as well (unless I'm mistaken).

Or are you referring to only the last 3 words? Intel's ARM chips?

kragen5• 18 years ago

It could be a problem for device vendors, but it shouldn't be a problem for web sites that want to serve ARM9 devices with MMUs, such as Intel's StrongARMs; the Native Client approach will work fine on ARM, although it will take some work to make it happen. The bit about "Intel's ARM chips" is pretty goofy, though.

Tichy• 18 years ago

uh, no thanks!

kragen5• 18 years ago

This article is really terrible. It spends half of the article before mentioning the actual contribution of Native Client, which is that it securely sandboxes C programs with little effort on the programmer's part, confuses source code analysis with object code analysis, talks about memory virtualization for security as if it had been invented in 2008 instead of ~1965 (and as if it weren't already a feature of every mainstream OS), glosses over the API differences and the difficulty of designing a secure OS API, and confuses Intel (one ARM licensee) with ARM.

In summary, it is an unreliable article written by someone without a clue.

tjpick• 18 years ago

I just don't get this stuff. The browser just isn't a great place to be running applications like that. It's a good place for consuming document based data. At the point where you have delivered an application that doesn't need to transfer any data as html-over-http, why would it be running inside the browser?

Maybe it's just that quake is a bad example use of this technology.

sadfsa• 18 years ago

Right now, there is a Web site (pogo.com) where people actually pay money to play pointless, boring games (such as Solitaire, Mahjong, etc), all of which are written in Java.

A similar Web site, using Native Client, could roll out higher quality games (like Quake) and charge higher prices for access.

sfk3• 18 years ago

It all comes down to the fact that for Google the browser is an advertisement delivery tool. Hence every browser improvement has the potential to increase revenues for them.

newt0311• 18 years ago

One question: If they are using 80386 memory segments, how do they cope with systems like AMD64 and the linux kernel both of which have flat memory systems? Besides, normal desktop OSes already isolate programs in their own memory segments. Its the device access permissions and systems syscall accesses that cause all the problem with secure object code usage.

jderick• 18 years ago

Great idea.. clearly Google has its eyes set on the OS market. First, move as much stuff to the cloud as you can, then open up NC for legacy apps.

Ben65• 18 years ago

Yawn! I hate it when people link anything from infoworld.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

" The code runs on the actual processor"

...as opposed to... magic?

(and yes, I understand what he means, I just found it amusing)

Native Client: Google's craziest idea yet

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