Re:Ask HN: Pros and cons of V8 isolates?
by willsher on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @07:20PM
(#31760694)
They are, or should be, entirely self contained such that whatever segregation is employed - be it hardware via a VM or in kernel with apparmor or SELinux provides sufficient segregation for the work load.
V8s problem is JavaScript and NPM, but limiting the blast radius with hardware virtualisation is a win for segregation and v8 will win, at least for front end, because it’s got the mindset. As long as the library ecosystem cleans up.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
"In kernel with apparmor or SELinux" can't possibly provide sufficient workload isolation, because it implies workloads share a kernel. It's easy to rattle off relatively recent kernel LPEs that no mandatory access control configuration would have prevented.
The Linux kernel simply wasn't designed to provide the kind of isolation "naive" containers want them to. Actually, generalize that out: Unix kernels in general weren't designed this way. It just doesn't work.
Re:Ask HN: Pros and cons of V8 isolates?
by ignoramous on Thursday June 16, 2022 @01:13AM
(#31762629)
End game then is LittleKernel/Zircon on Fly.io? When do we get to play with those?
Whether software based access control is sufficient depends on the workload and where in the stack the workload runs.
I agree though, hardware virtualisation based is more secure and less complex. It also requires access to bare metal, so a providers service or run it yourself, which is a trade off.