Web browsers
Email readers
Word processors
Document browsers (e.g. acrobat, xpdf, ghostview)
All those run in a jail of sorts: the current user. What would be
nifty is a way to allow a user to make sub-users, where he can
encapsulate a program and only give write/read access to a specific
directory. Which is possible to do with any extensive rewrites I
think.
Each of these runs code written by a very large number of untrusted
developers, and each downloads "plugins" (or equivalently: can spawn
local commands at the direction of documents) that I know nothing about.
[...]
The plugin code very often *is* hostile, and the programs that run
them very often contain security bugs.
Same thing can be said about kernels.
On the server side, things are even worse -- for those I need a new
sub-hurd for every page request that involves any sort of active
content.
Such paranoia isn't useful for a multi user system, or a single user
system. All it is is a academic excersise in `intellectual
mastrubation'.
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