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  • I run Obsidian with restricted capabilities: no network access, and no filesystem access outside its own directory. I only enable network access when updating plugins/themes.

    Same way I run any other application that could potentially execute untrusted code.

    by elric
  • Could you share how you're sandboxing it?
    by yjftsjthsd-h
  • Obsidian does not have auto update for community plugins. The steps for updating them right now is checking for updates and then updating all or individually.

    A bad update to one of the popular plugins could compromise lot of systems.

    by vetchzero
  • Reading the content the problem does not start with a plugin in Obisidian store but rather with a malicious vault they lure you to open.
    by dbacar
  • My worse fear has materialized. This is why I've never used an external Obsidian plugin and only my own plugins. It was only a matter of time before some malicious code ended up in one.
    by badcryptobitch
  • Brother, we are vindicated! There are indeed many cool bits and blobs out there, but I am already trusting one entity to secure my private notes, no way I am taking a pinky-promise from extension XYZ to behave.

    (I actually use LogSeq, but same idea applies).

    by 3eb7988a1663
  • I hope I'm speaking as a minority but when I first started using Obsidian the Youtube videos I watched encourage the usage of community plugins, even with these warnings I would enable the community plugins. You may very well have good actors that eventually turn bad for these plugins and users won't know.

    Maybe I just also have a higher personal risk appetite, but even as a dev and knowing these risks I would have enabled the community plugin option. Again, hope I'm just the minority here and not most user behaviour.

    by brusselsprout
  • One issue seems to be also that there are means dead plugins, not updated for years but still available. Does that mean they are especially stable or just no longer maintained? I don't know but ili applied the same rule I would for FDroid or the play store - not to install anything that isn't actively maintained.

    Also I can't tell how to prevent plugin updates. As long as you rely on a known safe version I guess there is never any real risk.

    by goobatrooba
  • Even being social engineering, the design of the plugin system allowing this means the platform is completely unusable as a sharing tool. It's good to know but to me this is not "I need to remember to have these settings correct to use a shared Obsidian vault", this for is instead "never accept a shared Obsidian vault, demand a plaintext export".
    by zhivota
  • What are the reasons behind the fact that almost all of these plugin systems are so poorly engineered? Is it too much work (ie, there are no good plugin development frameworks that already enable proper isolation/permission capabilities) or "simply" a widespread lack of knowledge of what is needed, so devs learn only after their own system has been abused? Both? Something else?
    by eviks
  • even chrome browser plugins have security issues similar to this case. there are billions of dollars and many smart developers working on it. It's similar to building an app store inside your app. For the Apple app store, they reduce malicious apps by being very strict who/what people can publish and it's behind a paywall.
    by cechmaster
  • Why does a plugin system immediately imply sandboxing?
    by pdntspa
  • Web stack plus lack of resources to architect the proper interfaces is my guess. These are software written in high level js frameworks, thus using poor dataflow patterns by default, mostly just following what is actually possible instead of employing intentional design, which would require going down some levels of abstraction and maintaining a custom fork of said frameworks. So they probably just architect plug-ins like you would instantiate a library passing a subset of the context the app uses. Basically the simplest workable thing possible. Although the disclosed hack does not mention any particular “vulnerability”. Plug-ins in obsidian are always in god mode, and the alleged hackers just tricked people in using them. Funny how an RCE waiting to happen behind a few popups is ultimately blamed on users. Shame on the developers.
    by pilgrim0
  • You’ll need to define the security framework and building blocks that all plugins may need, which takes time to design, implement, verify and maintain.

    Much easier to just skip that part.

    So yes, it’s too much work (in the sense that you need to have a security-focused leadership that understands that this is a lot of work but the right thing to do).

    by stingraycharles
  • At the core, there is the tradeoff between ability and security. You can give the users power and enable them doing fancy shit, or you can make it secure, stripping any meaningful ability. Usually, people prefer ability over security.

    The other problem is that security is hard, and just giving generic access and adding some basic guards is simple.

    by PurpleRamen
  • I don't know when Obsidian gathered the hate I'm seeing here, but 'bad plugins' is a failure mode of most everything that has plugins.

    Personally it feels similar to being mad at Windows if you were to install an exe someone emailed you and it turned out to be a virus.

    You can install bad chrome plugins, bad wow addons, basically anything that's purpose is to run user code can be used to run bad code.

    Personally I'm glad the _note taking app_ prioritized allowing for custom plugins over pushing back features so they could spend an extra year locking down user plugins. They can put some additional effort in but running unknown code will always be a risk.

    by ApolloFortyNine
  • There is no architectural limitation that makes it impossible for a plugin to not have full filesystem access.

    The fact that creating a good plugin system is difficult does not give them a free pass to not implement a good one, it is a for profit company that has a considerable revenue.

    by brazukadev
  • This is a misleading headline. It makes it seem like another supply chain attack where some good plug-in was taken over and used to deliver malware. Thats not the case here. Victims are invited to collaborate on a synced vault which comes preloaded with a non official plug-in that delivers the rat. Very very different story
    by nstart
  • What’s misleading?

    "Novel Campaign Abuses Obsidian Note-Taking App to Target Finance and Crypto Professionals with PHANTOMPULSE RAT”

    It’s novel (new), an abuse of Obsidian, specifically targeting a group of people.. and the RAT is embedded in the vault.

    by deafpolygon
  • I really like Obsidian. I use it every day and I don't use any community plugins because the permissions aren't up to snuff. I hope for a day where a plugin defines what it will need and that gets presented to me as a user.

    I have to imagine the Obsidian team is going to respond seriously to this and I look forward to seeing what they do. They have my full confidence. I'm surprised the system was initially designed as it is without those better permissions and sandboxing, though.

    by jjice
  • I started using it too when I got sick of using VS Code to look at md. Glad I never had the need to install any plug-ins! Very poor form on their part from what I can tell.
    by BrissyCoder
  • > The victim is prompted to enable the "Installed community plugins" synchronization feature.

    Obsidian has the proper protections in place to prevent this type of attack, and the victims are being convinced to ignore them. This is just a successful social engineering event. I hate to see Obsidian dragged down by this headline, since this attack is not exploiting a vulnerability in it or its plugin system.

    by slowmover
  • Right, I'm a heavy Obsidian user myself, and love it.

    I think the value of this disclosure is more in spreading awareness about plugins, and demonstrating the vector. Where less sophisticated users may think, "Oh, this is just a collection of markdown files. I don't need to be too worried about malicious code."

    by cmbailey
  • Ehm. No? https://obsidian.md/help/plugin-security#Plugin+capabilities

    >Due to technical limitations, Obsidian cannot reliably restrict plugins to specific permissions or access levels. This means that plugins will inherit Obsidian's access levels. As a result, consider the following examples of what community plugins can do:

        Community plugins can access files on your computer.
    Community plugins can connect to internet.
    Community plugins can install additional programs.
    Obsidian has no protection at all. Installing a plugin gives it full access to your computer.

    This was only a matter of time, and honestly I think it's inexcusably negligent that they shipped a plugin system like this at all since about 2010 (or arguably much earlier).

    by Groxx
  • Obsidian CEO here. There is a major update coming soon for plugin security. I think it will address many of the concerns people have raised in this thread. It's a hard problem but we are working on it.

    That said, the headline is misleading. This article is about a social engineering attack that requires the user to actively reject multiple safety warnings in Obsidian. As far as I know this is a proof of concept, I haven't seen any reports of users being affected by this attack.

    by kepano
  • An update:

    https://obsidian.md/blog/future-of-plugins/

    by kepano
  • Your product rules. Thanks.
    by jesse_dot_id
  • Obsidian stands beside the terminal and Firefox as one of the pieces of software I use the most every single day. Thank you for all you're doing.

    -

    I've read the article describing the attack, and my very first thought was utter surprise that the entire attack chain started with someone accepting a shared vault from a stranger via social media (linked in and similar). That seems really, really strange to me.

    I've never shared a vault - but if I did, I'd probably do so as a git repo of markdown files.

    It would be interesting to see a blog post from Obsidian about "good hygiene for sharing vaults".

    by schaefer
  • I don't know how hard it would be but IMHO adding some kind of permissions dialog(?) akin to Android would go a long way. 99% of Obsidian plugins don't need full disk access, or internet access for that matter.
    by lossyalgo
  • I don't understand the hate here. Obsidian is a well working product that scratches many inches. Plugins allow to scratch some more itches, but are not mandatory.

    I am using several plugins and would prefer not to, but they allow me to bring the (mobile) app closer to what I want (notably templater and homepage as I want to get a new daily note sorted in monthly folders, which obsidian doesn't seem to allow natively).

    Maybe an alternative would also be to more explicitly allow users to create their own scripts - but maybe that's possible and I just don't know.

    Overall I think the key challenge with obsidian use is that it offers too much, and there's a lot to fiddle with. While it will bother the power users probably best would be to just move on many ways to "default" behaviours and e.g. make many of the "core plugins" just settings to make the list lsss overwhelming.

    by goobatrooba