Hey all!
(I did post this in c/flatpak, but this community is more active. I am not sure where would be more appropriate)
Something that I have been wanting to get working is having my browser and password manager both in flatpak. I really like being sandbox and having faster updates if the distro is on the slower side perhaps.
I have a set up with Firefox as a deb and keepassxc as a flat and that works find as one would expect. I did want to install Vivaldi as a flatpak and was not able to get it to talk with keepass.
In my reading I found this: installing KeePassXC natively, which you’d actually want for security reasons.
installing KeePassXC natively, which you’d actually want for security reasons
What is mean by that line of reasoning?
Browsers do have their own sandboxing, trying to prevent things like a JavaScript overflow on one website affecting other tabs, etc
Flatpaks use user namespaces and run each program in their own filesystem snapshot
Chromium in flathub has been patched to support its own sandboxing inside of the Flatpak sandbox
Firefox only loses its user namespace, but Flatpak has already put it in its own user namespace
The only reduction in the browsers own sandboxing is if they’re creating separate user namespaces per remote process, but in about:support, Firefox still lists itself as having the max sandbox level even in the Flatpak
The nice thing about Flatpak is that you can restrict it even more - e.g. my browser is only allowed to touch files in ~/Downloads/firefox
I don’t use webcams/mics through Firefox, so it also has no access to those, etc
You can set fine grained permissions easily with a program called Flatseal to decide what your browser should be able to touch on your machine