Ubuntu Prompting Client is Here to Make Snap Apps Safer
Quoting: Ubuntu Prompting Client is Here to Make Snap Apps Safer - OMG! Ubuntu —
As you may have read in my article last week, Prompting Client is a security buffer — think doorman — that guards your home folder. Whenever a snap app wants to access non-hidden files within, Prompting Client intervenes to ask you to approve.
I’d been tracking this tool’s development for a while but there wasn’t really a lot of explanation or rationale behind it on the project’s Github, and some of the links in commits and issues filed by Canonical engineers were protected.
Today, Canonical has revealed more details about this (presently experimental) security feature.
When a snap app tries to access something outside of its sandbox a dialog (built using Flutter, Ubuntu’s default app toolkit) appears to ‘prompt’ you into reviewing and authorising the permissions it seeks.
Update
More here:
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Ubuntu 24.10 gets a new Snap feature to handle prompting for app permissions
Canonical are continuing to advance their own Snap packaging system, with the Ubuntu 24.10 development builds getting a new permission prompt feature.
One more:
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Try Out the New Security Center in Ubuntu 24.04
Ubuntu is working on a new desktop security center and prompting-client. Here’s how to try it out in current Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. It’s an experimental new feature that will land in next Ubuntu 24.10. Which, provides graphical interface to make it easier for users to control the file/folder access permission for Snap apps.
It's FOSS News:
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Ubuntu Adds a New Authentication Feature
Being adept in the field of cybersecurity is an important skill to have, more so if you are an enterprise with a workforce spanning the globe. If you were to slip up, it would open up the door for a range of cyberattacks, resulting in monetary and reputational losses.
Some of the most common ways to secure an IT infrastructure are to manage who/what gets access to which resources through the use of open protocols like OAuth. Another increasingly popular way to manage identity authentication is by using OpenID Connect (OIDC), which is based on OAuth and is a standardized way for authorizing users to access apps and services.
Moving on to the topic at hand, Canonical has introduced support for OIDC authentication on Ubuntu by implementing a new open-source tool called “Authd”.
And here:
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Ubuntu 24.10 Will Improve Snap Permissions
Snaps are containerized apps Canonical has pioneered in an effort to solve the complexity surrounding traditional Linux packages. Snaps, like competing Flatpaks, have all their dependencies in a self-contained package, rather than relying on the system’s libraries. As a result, Snaps provide a way to have the latest applications, even on older Linux distros. In addition, Snaps provide a measure of sandboxing, because the app is self-contained.