Adobe has worked with Apple to implement sandboxing for Flash Player in Safari browser for the Mac OS X Mavericks to restrict malicious code from running outside of the browser and to provide enhanced security to users.
Sandboxing is basically a mechanism through which a tool’s ability to interact with the operating system and the file system is restricted thereby isolating and limiting the execution of potentially dangerous code within a particular security context.
“With this week’s release of Safari in OS X Mavericks, Flash Player will now be protected by an OS X App Sandbox”, noted Peleus Uhley, Platform Security Strategist at Adobe in a blog post.
Uhley explained that the sandboxing of Flash Player within Safari would restrict the player’s ability to read and write files as well as restrict the operating system assets that it can access including device resources and inter-process communication (IPC). Further the sandbox will also restrict the player’s networking privileges restricting the unnecessary network connection capabilities.
Uhley added that the step has been taken after successfully implementing sandboxing in other browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
“Safari users on OS X Mavericks can view Flash Player content while benefiting from these added security protections. We’d like to thank the Apple security team for working with us to deliver this solution.”
