this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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I am not so sure this really establishes that Firefox in a Flatpak is less secure. From the linked bug:
It might be more accurate to say that some per process isolation features don't work because flatpak uses them to isolate Firefox from the rest of the system. This could make it easier to smuggle data between processes in Firefox. It reads like a trade off to me and the impact depends on your security model -- whether you value interprocess isolation more than isolation between the app and the system.
Either way, interesting find! I didn't know some of Firefox's sandboxing is precluded by the Flatpak sandboxing. I edited my comment to dispell the claim that it's more secure.
Yeah as they said it’s complicated, but in an unintuitive way more sandbox of apps can lead to apps being less effective at sandboxing themselves. Which, like you said, can be good bad or neutral depending on your threat model.
Personally I am leaning towards not using browser in Flatpaks since I trust the browser to sandbox itself. Not the position I started from initially where I would have assumed more sandboxing is a uniformly good thing.
Much respect for the discussion. I learned things.