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jart commented on Linux Sandboxes and Fil-C   fil-c.org/seccomp... · Posted by u/pizlonator
pornel · a day ago
There's a hybrid approach of C -> WASM -> C compilation, which ends up controlling every OS interaction and sandboxing memory access like WASM, while technically remaining C code:

https://rlbox.dev/

jart · a day ago
WASM sandboxes don't do much to guarantee the soundness of your program. It can hose your memory all it wants, it can just only do so within the confines of the sandbox.

Using a sandbox also limits what you can do with a system. With stuff like SECCOMP you have to methodically define policies for all its interactions. Like you're dealing with two systems. It's very bureaucratic and the reason we do it, is because we don't trust our programs to behave.

With Fil-C you get a different approach. The language and runtime offer a stronger level of assurance your program can only behave, so you can trust it more to have unfettered access to the actual system. You also have the choice to use Fil-C with a sandbox like SECCOMP as described in the blog post, since your Fil-C binaries are just normal executables that can access powerful Linux APIs like prctl. It took Linux twenty years to invent that interface, so you'll probably have to wait ten years to get something comparable from WASI.

jart commented on Linux Sandboxes and Fil-C   fil-c.org/seccomp... · Posted by u/pizlonator
jagrsw · a day ago
The author has a knack for generating buzz (and making technically interesting inventions) :)

I'm a little concerned that no one (besides the author?) has checked the implementation to see if reducing the attack surface in one area (memory security) might cause problems in other layers.

For example, Filip mentioned that some setuid programs can be compiled with it, but it also makes changes to ld.so. I pointed this out to the author on Twitter, as it could be problematic. Setuid applications need to be written super-defensively because they can be affected by envars, file descriptors (e.g. there could be funny logical bugs if fd=1/2 is closed for a set-uid app, and then it opens something, and starts using printf(), think about it:), rlimits, and signals. The custom modifications to ld.so likely don't account for this yet?

In other words, these are still teething problems with Fil-C, which will be reviewed and fixed over time. I just want to point out that using it for real-world "infrastructures" might be somewhat risky at this point. We need unix nerds to experiment with.

OTOH, it's probably a good idea to test your codebase with it (provided it compiles, of course) - this phase could uncover some interesting problems (assuming there aren't too many false positives).

jart · a day ago
I've been doing just that. If there's a way to break fil-c we're gonna find it.
jart commented on Purdue University approves new AI requirement for all undergrads   forbes.com/sites/michaelt... · Posted by u/rmason
gamblor956 · a day ago
This is going to be like when all the schools were pushing big data because that was going to be the next big thing.

After more than a trillion dollars spent, LLMs can replace: (a) a new secretary with one week of experience (b) a junior programmer who just learned that they can install programs on a desktop computer, and (c) James Patterson.

That's the bright future that Purdue is preparing its students for.

Yes, AIs will be a huge thing...eventually...but LLMs are not AI, and they never will be.

jart · a day ago
I hope Anthropic is saving all my interactions with Claude so they can replace me when I'm gone.

Then future generations who like old school systems hacking will be able to pair program with Justine AI.

jart commented on I Am Mark Zuckerberg   iammarkzuckerberg.com/... · Posted by u/jb1991
jart · a month ago
Sucks to have all the downsides of being famous, but none of the benefits.
jart commented on Llamafile Returns   blog.mozilla.ai/llamafile... · Posted by u/aittalam
setheron · a month ago
jart, you are back at Google?
jart · a month ago
Yeah Google liked llamafile so much that they asked me to help them improve the LLM on their website too.
jart commented on Alphabet tops $100B quarterly revenue for first time, cloud grows 34%   cnbc.com/2025/10/29/alpha... · Posted by u/thelastgallon
neya · a month ago
I've been a GCP consultant for close to a decade now. Google messed up big time lagging behind in AI - they just kept increasing prices in other products for about 5 years straight (CDN, for example) and did nothing to productize AI. I'm of the belief that ChatGPT should've been their pilot project. What they have now (AI mode) in Google should've been there well before ChatGPT.

But, all that aside, you know what they're really good at? Google Cloud. I'm a user of all the major Cloud providers and nothing beats GCP's interface. Azure? Complicated, buggy and unreliable. There's some exploit every quarter. AWS? Overly complex security policies even to deploy a basic app, very enterprise focused and startup-unfriendly. GCP - you can be up and running on a serverless/VM instance in your lunch break. Simple, reliable, scales effortlessly. We serve 10M+ visitors on there and we've had zero issues in the last half a decade with them.

They suck at a lot of other things and they have a lot of other problems. But boy, are they good at Cloud. No wonder even Apple is their customer. It's one of the few products from Google where you can say "it just works".

jart · a month ago
I think App Engine was really ahead of its time in showing how simple cloud deployments can be. It had a similar ease of use as setting up a YouTube account. For that reason, a lot of people thought of it as a toy, which was kind of unfair because companies like Niantic were able to build global products on it. So a lot of Google Cloud afterward ended up being designed to be more "normal" like how Amazon is. Now people are seeing what normal gets them, so maybe it's going to be time for the Google way of doing things to finally shine. (Disclaimer: I'm a Google employee)
jart commented on Llamafile Returns   blog.mozilla.ai/llamafile... · Posted by u/aittalam
jart · a month ago
Really exciting to see Mozilla AI starting up and I can't wait to see where the next generation takes the project!

Deleted Comment

jart commented on The security paradox of local LLMs   quesma.com/blog/local-llm... · Posted by u/jakozaur
jart · 2 months ago
It's always been the case with local infrastructure that if you run it yourself, you have to secure it yourself. It's not a vulnerability for local software to do what I tell it to do. Maybe I want to ask an LLM to try to hack into the things on my local network, to make sure nothing is vulnerable. The real vulnerability would be if the LLM does things I didn't ask it to do, like delete my production database. So it always irks me when security work is approached with the viewpoint that I'm the one who's untrustworthy and needs to be controlled rather than the machine. The whole point of tools throughout history has been to give people more power.

u/jart

KarmaCake day13631December 18, 2009View Original