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We've had capability based security frameworks aka MAC (ex: AppArmor) in Linux since 1999 or earlier. Containers (which also existed long before docker) have been popularized for convenience, and virtualization would still be useful for running required systems that are not similar to the host. If anything it looks like we're going towards a convergence with "microvms".


Capabilities are like taking a $5 bill out of your wallet, handing it to your child, and letting them buy ice cream with it.

You delegate $5, nothing more than $5 can possibly leave your wallet as a result.

AppArmor is like putting a vault around the ice cream truck and giving a strict list of who is allowed to buy what ice cream. Hardly the same thing.


Ehh, isn't MAC nearly the opposite of capability based security though? At the core of capability based security is that you don't separate authority to access a resource from your designation of that resource. MAC though seems to go all-in on separate policies to control what gets access to what.


A convinience that only exists when the target hardware and underlying kernel are compatible with the development environmnet, when that isn't the case, oopla, a VM layer in the middle to fake the devenv, or in the devenv to fake the serverenv.




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