Simple sandbox

When running programs of questionable security/privacy, it is highly advised to sandbox/jail them. There are many sandboxing methods (todo list them). This article describes the oldest, simplest, and very widely used sandboxing method, namely running a program as a special sandbox user.

In Gentoo, this method is used by many packages, e.g. the Apache web server is running as the apache user.

This method relies solely on the unix user and group permissions. It requires no kernel tweeking and little extra software ( and ). It is also possible to avoid sudo and use plain old su, but then a password needs to be entered each time we run a sandboxed program.

As a minimum, you should use a sandbox for software which:


 * Has a known security/privacy issue.
 * Has a history of security/privacy issues.
 * Is distributed in binary form (e.g. many games).
 * Has huge codebase (e.g. libreoffice).
 * Is no longer maintained.
 * Is very young (brand new project).
 * Is unstable.
 * Accesses network (email, web, torrent, etc.).

We assume (without loss of generality):


 * is the package we want to sandbox.
 * 'bob' is our own everyday user.
 * 'Mallet' is an attacker.
 * 'ff' is the sandbox user used only to run Firefox.

Sandboxing Firefox is mandatory, as it matches multiple patterns on our list. Like all big graphical browsers, it has a history of vulnerabilities. In recent releases, it is distributed partially in binary form (includes binary Adobe DRM and installs binary Cisco codecs). It also has huge codebase and accesses network.

We assume Mallet can exploit a vulnerability in Firefox to access bob's files (emails, SSH keys, Bitcoin wallet, etc.). However, if bob runs Firefox as ff, then Mallet has only access to the resources available to ff, and would need a further exploit of privilege escalation to access bob's data. This obviously assumes tight permissions set on bob's files. This sandboxing method is not the most restrictive, Mallet could still learn a lot about our system, start new processes as ff, use the network, and do anything a user can. But it is also possible to configure the permissions on our system so that Mallet can do very little as ff (such configuration is not explained here).

Create sandbox user
Root creates the 'ff' sandbox user:

If you prefer to sudo, use  instead of.

Install and configure sudo
Allow bob to run firefox as user ff, without need for password:

Since we regard ff as a kind of subuser of bob, it is convenient to allow bob to run any command as ff. This is not necessary for Firefox, but could be useful for packages with many executables:

If you prefer su to sudo, then instead set a password for ff:

Configure X server access control (optional)
This step is only needed if the package is graphical and your X's access control is enabled.

In order to run Firefox as ff, we could of course start a new desktop session as user ff (login using our display manager), but that would be inconvenient. Instead, we would like to work as bob, but open a Firefox window as ff. For that, root installs xhost:

And bob allows ff to connect to bob's X server (to create windows):

bob runs firefox as sandbox user ff
If you prefer su:

If all went well, Firefox is now running in a window on bob's desktop. The window title says 'Mozilla Firefox (as ff)', to indicate that this window is run by ff.

Migrate config files (optional)
ff will have his own home directory, for storing the Firefox profile, i.e. all browsing settings. That's all the files Firefox needs access to. The precise configuration migration manual is very package-dependent and is beyond the scope of this article. However, assuming Firefox is the only Mozilla software bob has used, root can migrate bob's settings:

Adding shortcut icons.
Now bob can create icons or add firefox to startup applications in his desktop environment. However, sometimes such graphical tools only allow to enter one command to be executed. We can conjoin xhost and sudo into one command by using sh:

sh -c 'xhost si:localuser:ff && sudo -u ff firefox'

Alternatively, john could invoke xhost already when X session starts.

Allow bob to access ff's home
We don't want ff to access bob's files, but it is useful for bob to access ff's files:

For instance, when running Firefox as ff, downloaded files can only be saved in or in.

Multiple humans
This method suffices if bob is the only person using this computer. Otherwise, we need to create a separate sandbox user for each real user in order to have separate sandboxed home directories for config files, e.g. ff_bob sandbox user for bob, ff_alice for alice, etc.

Disallow bob to run Firefox without sandbox (optional)
One problem is: bob can forget to run Firefox using sudo, and can run it directly as himself, e.g. by clicking the Firefox icon. For extra security, we tighten permissions of package files, so that only the sandbox user can run Firefox.

Disallow the owning user (root):

Disallow all other users (e.g. bob):

Let us set the group to ff, so ff user (the only one in ff group) can get access:

However, ff should not modify any package files:

Let's have a look at the results:

Great, now only ff can run (but not modify) Firefox.

These permissions would be lost on any package reinstall or upgrade. We create Portage hook that sets them after every installation:

echo 'post_src_install { chmod -R u-x,g-w,o-o ${D} chown -R root:ff ${D} }' > /etc/portage/env/www-client/firefox

Repeat for other packages.
The script below can be used to quickly set up sandbox for any package.


 * 1) !/bin/bash

[ $# -ne 4 ] && echo "Usage: $0 cat/package sandbox_user sandbox_user_home user" && exit 1

pkg=$1 sbuser=$2 home=$3 user=$4

useradd --home=$home --create-home --shell /bin/false --user-group $sbuser chgrp $user $home chmod 770 $home

echo "$user ALL=($sbuser) NOPASSWD: ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/$sbuser

qlist "$pkg" | xargs chmod u-x,g-w,o-o qlist "$pkg" | xargs chown root:$sbuser

bashrc="/etc/portage/env/$pkg"

mkdir -p $(dirname $bashrc)

echo "post_src_install { chmod -R u-x,g-w,o-o \${D}  chown -R root:$sbuser \${D} }" > $bashrc

This script can be called like:

Further work
todo: when john clicks on links in other programs, can they open in ff's Firefox window?