[Python-Dev] The pysandbox project is broken

[Eli Bendersky]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 6:58 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 6:30 AM, Facundo Batista <facundobatista at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 4:37 AM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >> Do you think it would be productive to create an independent Python
>> >> compiler, designed with sandboxing in mind from the beginning?
>> >
>> > PyPy sandbox does work FYI
>> >
>> > It might not do exactly what you want, but it both provides a full
>> > python and security.
>>
>> If we have sandboxing using PyPy... what also we need to put Python
>> running in the browser? (like javascript, you know)
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>
> You can try to get PNaCl to work with Python to get a Python executable
> that at least Chrome can run.
>

Two corrections:

1. CPython already works with NaCl and PNaCl (there are working patches in
naclports to build it)
2. It can be used outside Chrome as well, using the standalone "sel_ldr"
tool that will then allow to run a sandboxed CPython .nexe from the command
line

Note that this is a fundamentally different sandboxing model (the whole
interpreter is run in a sandbox), but it's also more secure. PNaCl has
shipped publicly yesterday, so Chrome runs native code *from the web* on
your machine - a lot of security research and work went into making this
possible.

As for performance, the sandboxing overhead of NaCl is very low (< 10% in
most cases).

Eli
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