[Cryptography] Simpler programs?

[Bill Frantz]

On 4/19/14 at 2:43 AM, ben at links.org (Ben Laurie) wrote:

>The nice thing about the file powerbox is you capture the user's
>intent through a familiar and reasonably clear interaction. Network
>sockets are trickier.

Absolutely agreed. But don't let the perfect be the fatal enemy 
of the better. Even if we only have control on file access and 
no control on network access, the only things the application 
can leak are the files it has been given, not every file the 
user can access, which is an improvement.

I think we can do better because many programs, e.g. web 
browsers, that access the network don't make much use of the 
user's files. Sure you explicitly up and down load files, but 
those come in with standard file requestors.

The idea of limiting the sites a web browser can access seems 
very difficult. Between links to resolve in-page content, and 
caches like Akamai, there is almost no limit on the sites a 
browser can legitimately access to render a page.

Cheers - Bill

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