Re:State of the Web: Deno
by goldsteinq on Monday January 10, 2022 @02:54AM
(#29871755)
Yep, trying to restrict the access to a system on the API level instead of the OS level will inevitably lead to problems like these (Deno is doing worse than it could though).
If you want to isolate your program, you should use an OS-level sandbox like bubblewrap or a lightweight VM like Firecracker. I’m not familiar with Apple’s JavaScriptCore, but if it doesn’t provide any access to the system (and instead relies on passing arguments from Swift code), it might also be a viable approach.
> if it doesn’t provide any access to the system
Yes, my understanding is that it's the pure language interpreter without anything about filesystems or web browser. You need to create an interface in Swift/Objective-C or C to put in and get data out of the execution context.
Is there an alternative tool you can suggest, to allow us securely run arbitrary JS? I was looking at Apple's JavaScriptCore to run JS and and if it happens that I need any level of access to the system(i.e. files) simply handle that in Swift and pass the file to the JS. Would that be a secure approach?