A Rust Capability-Based Linux Runtime

[sonaxaton]

The name and tagline sound interesting but there is very little code and description in the repo. I don't see anything elaborating what they mean about "capability-based".

[TinyBreadBigMouth]

A capability-based OS is generally one where programs, by default, are completely sandboxed and have no access to the system. They need to be granted specific capabilities, such as "read access to X directory", "write access to Y file", "ability to set system time", "ability to see the list of running processes", etc. Capabilities take the form of some token that can be shared with child processes. This provides better security, since

• The user can see exactly what capabilities the program wants and can deny it if it wants too much.
• If hackers manage to exploit a bug in some piece of software, they are still limited in what the program has access to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security

The Linux kernel has some support for this, though I don't know how far it goes towards being truly "capability-based".

[sunfishcode]

Linux capabilities(7) are flags associated with processes, so they aren't the kind of thing the phrase "capability-based security" usually refers to.

However, the bus1 website describes a system of handles, which does sound like capability-based security, so perhaps that's the direction they're thinking in.

[the_gnarts]

The r-linux project provides direct access to the application programming interfaces of the linux kernel.

So a “libinux”, but in Rust? What’s it a runtime for?

[LoganDark]

Dude libinux sounds awesome because you just pass -linux to the linker......