[sugar] Clicking links (was Re: sugar roadmap)

[Jameson "Chema" Quinn]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:37 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
> wrote:
> >
> >  On 11.04.2008, at 07:12, Eben Eliason wrote:
> >  > On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Jameson Chema Quinn
> >  > <jquinn at cs.oberlin.edu> wrote:
> >  >> I'm assuming that the data would only go one way. In that case, the
> >  >> permission would be, an app without P_NETWORK would not be able to
> >  >> request
> >  >> opening of apps with P_NETWORK. No new permissions needed, just
> >  >> careful
> >  >> attention to the ones we have.
> >  >
> >  > Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this particular requirement.  The
> >  > activity launched will be completely isolated from that which
> >  > requested it.  Why would we need to make this statement hold?  If I
> >  > have, for instance, chosen to trust my web browser to use P_NETWORK,
> >  > then why should it matter that it was asked to launch by something
> >  > that didn't?
> >
> >
> >  Because a malicious activity could encode a private document as URL
> >  and have the browser go to that URL, which would send it to any server
> >  on the internet.
>
> Well, isn't that interesting.  You have a point, there, and I don't
> see any good way around it.
>

One way would be to launch an instance of Browse without P_NETWORK (and, of
course, with a virgin configuration, which was deleted after running). You
could view your document locally, and P_NETWORK would not be violated.

If, in fact, this use case is considered important enough to be worth the
effort. I'd say that watching P_NETWORK as I suggested originally would be a
good enough first-pass solution that probably we'd never get a second pass.


> Well, perhaps a permission is in fact needed then.  Of course, I still
> see that there could be worth in a service which allows activities to
> launch others.  Perhaps the Develop activity eventually wants to
> launch an SVG editor for its icon.  Perhaps Write wants to be able to
> embed links to other projects (as was initially mentioned as the use
> case) for writing tutorials.  I'm not sure how to accomplish this.
>
> - Eben


Note that these use-cases can be done with the P_NETWORK scheme - assuming
that, instead of writing your tutorials in Write, you do it in Blog (which
may indeed by a special case of Browse), which makes more sense anyway.
(Yes, I am proposing a url format for activity launching - this is safe,
since the originating app would have P_NETWORK.)

Jameson
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