Re: Changing from L4 to something else...

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Friday 28 October 2005 03:34 pm, Bas Wijnen wrote:
> If the system is well designed, then there is no problem.  First of all, it
> doesn't sound like a good idea to need a plugin just to set your
> preferences. But even if it is, you don't need to give it permission to
> write to your *entire* configuration.  If mozilla is well designed (where
> well-designed means "using the capability system effectively", which of
> course it doesn't), it can allow the plugin to write some configuration
> once, but not allow it to install a proxy.

For example, look at this extension:

http://www.roundtwo.com/product/switchproxy

Whether you like it or not, this kind of extensions are very useful for some 
people, so they will use. "Do not use such a silly plugin" is not an 
appropriate answer for this, since the purpose of a good secure framework is 
to allow people to use untrusted code such as this with no or little risk.

I meant here that 100% (or maybe 99.99%) security is simply impossible without 
sacrificing convenience or freedom. This is because people may not clearly 
draw a border line between what they want and what they don't want.

So, decisions must be always based on a balanced view. Otherwise, conclusions 
would be far away from the reality.

Okuji