Sandboxing Libraries: A Thorny Path to Security
This article delves into the significant challenges of building sandboxed libraries. The author explores threat modeling, memory tampering, cross-language interoperability, and code reuse. Even languages like Java struggle with complete sandboxing due to features like reflection, global methods, and native methods. Joe-E, a capability-based programming language, while severely restricting Java's functionality, offers valuable insights. However, this approach introduces the "God Object" problem, requiring a single object to control all permissions, contradicting good OOP principles. Chrome's Mojo system presents a process-based sandboxing solution, but faces challenges like unstable APIs, code reuse difficulties, and performance overhead. Ultimately, creating secure sandboxed libraries remains a complex and unsolved problem.
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