Debian 13:

$ uname -r
6.12.88+deb13-amd64

$ snap debug sandbox-features|grep confinement
confinement-options:  classic devmode

$ snap debug confinement
partial

$ aa-enabled
Yes

Ubuntu (24.04):

$ uname -r
6.8.0-117-generic

$ snap debug sandbox-features|grep confinement
confinement-options:  classic devmode strict

$ snap debug confinement
strict

$ aa-enabled
Yes

What does this mean, you ask? Well, basically every Snap package you thought was running isolated in it’s own little sandbox were running unconfined the whole time. The prorpietary app you removed the :home connection from, so it wouldn’t be able to access your home directory? Well, it could have exfiltrated all our private files in the meantime.

How is this not a bigger deal and how are Snaps ever to become mainstream when even today, more than 10 years after the introduction of snaps, you can’t run them sandboxed on a huge portion of Linux distros?

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    31·
    5 hours ago

    If I had to guess, this isn’t a bigger issue because Snap is mostly pushed by Canonical. And in a bit of a weird way (proprietary backend, exclusive apps) so… reception in the rest of the Linux community is …mixed. To put it charitably. It’s probably not that relevant for most people outside of the Ubuntu ecosystem. And probably also not a priority for Canonical or the proprietary software vendors.