Mac Os X Run App In Sandbox

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OS X has a built-in sandbox feature for applications, which can restrict their access to certain parts of the system. There isn't a lot of documentation available on the sandboxing system, but I've successfully been able to sandbox Firefox. Mac App Store's Sandbox Loophole. This is a superb data recovery utility that dates all the way back to before the advent of Mac OS X. Must meet sandboxing requirements before it can run on. Sandboxing is required if you want your Mac app to go on the App Store, so in this video we're going to show you how to do just that. Snapchat: iap128 Subscribe to our daily Tech Letter.

Sign of the App sandbox on OS X was found to be vulnerable, ex-posing an app’s private directory to the sandboxed malware that hi-jacks its Apple Bundle ID. As a result, sensitive user data, like the notes and user contacts under Evernote and photos under WeChat, have all been disclosed. Fundamentally, these problems are caused by the lack of. OS X has a built-in sandbox feature for applications, which can restrict their access to certain parts of the system. There isn't a lot of documentation available on the sandboxing system, but I've successfully been able to sandbox Firefox.

Native Mac apps built with Mac Catalyst can share code with your iPad apps, and you can add more features just for Mac. In macOS Big Sur, you can create even more powerful versions of your apps and take advantage of every pixel on the screen by running them at native Mac resolution. Apps built with Mac Catalyst can now be fully controlled using just the keyboard, access more iOS frameworks, and take advantage of the all-new look of macOS Big Sur. There’s never been a better time to turn your iPad app into a powerful Mac app.

Designed for macOS Big Sur.

When an app built with Mac Catalyst runs on macOS Big Sur, it automatically adopts the new design. The new Maps and Messages apps were built with the latest version of Mac Catalyst.

Get a head start on your native Mac app.

Your iPad app can be made into an excellent Mac app. Now’s the perfect time to bring your app to life on Mac. The latest version of Xcode 12 is all you need. Begin by selecting the “Mac” checkbox in the project settings of your existing iPad app to create a native Mac app that you can enhance further. Your Mac and iPad apps share the same project and source code, making it easy to make changes in one place.

Optimize your interface for Mac.

Your newly created Mac app runs natively, utilizing the same frameworks, resources, and runtime environment as apps built just for Mac. Fundamental Mac desktop and windowing features are added, and touch controls are adapted to the keyboard and mouse. By default, your app will scale to match the iPad’s resolution. On macOS Big Sur, you can choose “Optimize interface for Mac” to use the Mac idiom, running your app using the native resolution on Mac. This gives you full control of every pixel on the screen and allows your app to adopt more controls specific to Mac, such as pull-down menus and checkboxes.

Mac Os X Run App In Sandbox Windows 10

Even more powerful.

The new APIs and behaviors in macOS Big Sur let you create even more powerful Mac apps. Apps can now be fully controlled using just the keyboard. You can create out-of-window and detachable popovers, control window tabbing using new window APIs, and make it easier for users to select photos in your app by using the updated Photos picker. iOS Photos editing extensions can now be built to run on Mac. And your app is even easier to manage when it’s running in the background with improved app lifecycle APIs.

New and updated frameworks.

Mac Catalyst adds support for new and updated frameworks to extend what your apps can do on Mac. HomeKit support means home automation apps can run alongside the Home app on Mac. The addition of the ClassKit framework lets Mac apps track assignments and share progress with teachers and students. Plus, there are updates to many existing frameworks, including Accounts, Contacts, Core Audio, GameKit, MediaPlayer, PassKit, and StoreKit.

Tools and resources.

Download Xcode 12 and use these resources to build native Mac apps with Mac Catalyst.

Since 2012, all apps on the Mac App Store must run in an app sandbox, which restricts access to system resources unless explicitly required. The secure sandbox isolates the app and defines access controls, protecting users from malicious code with undesired behaviour.

Here's how to setup a sandbox for an app downloaded from outside the Mac App Store.

In my case, I wanted to test out Kodi v17.0 'Krypton' Release Candidate 4 (previously XBMC), an open-source, cross-platform media centre software. I also installed a Kodi Add-on from an 'untrusted source,' which sounds dangerous, doesn't it?

/mac-apps-won-39.html. Enter, sandbox! My goal was to prevent Kodi from reading my files, and writing files in locations I did not expect. This goes a long way to securing the system but does not guarantee that you are 'protected'!

Information on sandboxing is rather sparse, but I found two great sources:

  • Paolo Fabio Zaino's Blog - How to run your Applications in a Mac OS X sandbox to enhance security and Maximum security and privacy using Mac OS sandbox and Tor browser bundle
  • Mozilla's Sandbox OS/X rule set with a detailed Apple's Sandbox Guide v1.0 PDF

Also, your mac also comes with pre-configured sandbox rules found in /usr/share/sandbox/ which are good starting points.

Creating a Sandbox and Running It

To run an app sandboxed, first create a file with the set of rules to permit or deny access to system resources, e.g. file system, network, audio, etc.

In kodi.sb:

Now, instead of running the application directly, run it via Terminal:

Finally, to create a 'shortcut' to sandbox-exec that can be quickly run from Finder / Spotlight, create a file called kodi.command as below. The individual commands can be concatinated into a single line, or you can maintain the line breaks for readability:

Manual Sandbox Testing

To configure the rules, my process was:

  • Initially, deny all access,
  • Run Kodi (which would inevitably fail), and:
    • Inspect the console output,
    • Inspect the Kodi log files and via Console,
    • And also view the open files and ports in Activity Monitor (screen shot below).
  • Add individual allow permissions one at a time, until I get the functionality I expect.

Mac Os X Run App In Sandbox Free

Via Activity Monitor, double click on an app and select Open Files and Ports:

I didn't test everything, and I intentionally did not want Kodi to access my filesystem. You might want to change this behaviour, e.g. add your movies and music folders. I also see Kodi is trying to access /Users/[[username]]/Library/Saved Application State/org.xbmc.kodi.savedState/ but I was simply too lazy to add it.

Sandbox Rules

To briefly explain the rules:

  • deny default - deny everything by default.
  • allow network - allows network access.
  • allow iokit-open - access to device drivers, required for Core Image and OpenGL.
  • allow file-read-metadata - without which, no ability to list directories (ls).
  • allow mach* sysctl-read - to get to system info in read mode.
  • (allow ipc-posix-shm (ipc-posix-name-regex '^AudioIO')) - it took me the longest time to enable audio, turns out AudioIO is implemented using shared memory.
  • (allow process-exec (regex '/Applications/Kodi.app')) - allow the Kodi process, and any child processes, to run.
  • (allow file-read-data (literal '/dev/urandom')) - to avoid the error Error in GnuTLS initialization: Failed to acquire random data, configured to be an exact match (literal, compare with regex below).
  • (allow file-read-data (regex .. - read access to system library files and the Kodi.app contents itself:
    • The regex pattern^ means 'starting with' i.e. allow read only access to files and folders starting with /System/Library/.
    • You can add other folders here, e.g. '^/usr/lib/.*.dylib$' to access user libraries. The $ means 'ending with' and is an example of being explicit!
    • Or the movies, music and org.xbmc.kodi.savedState folders mentioned above.
  • (allow file-write* file-read-data (regex .. - allow write access to:
    • Logs folder.
    • Application Support where add-ons, preferences and databases are stored.
Conclusion

MacOS has an extremely granular sandboxing capability, courtesy of BSD, and is enabled by default for apps from the Mac App Store.

However, to sandbox any other application, it's rather involved and poorly documented. I hope the simplified explanation and sample rules above help you.

Updated 9 Feb: allow read access to /usr/share/zoneinfo for the time to be displayed correctly based on the configured time zone.

Sandbox App Free

Update 4 Mar: use sandbox-exec -p profile-string instead, to avoid the dependency on an external .sb file.

Update 26 Mar: fixed a small 'bug' where I refer to sandbox_exec instead of sandbox-exec.