What is the safest way to run an executable on Linux?

Question

I am trying to run a program compiled from C code from an unknown source. I want to make sure that the program does not harm my system in anyway. Like for instance, the program might have soemthing like system("rm -rf /") in the source, which is un-detectable, unless the code is thoroughly examined.

I thought of the following 2 ways

1. Run it inside a VM like VMWare
2. Build a windows exe on linux and run on wine

Both are not very elegant solutions and I cannot automate them. and also, in case of 1, it can harm the VM.

Any help would be appreciated.

I want to run the program in what we can call a "sandbox".

Answer 1

Create an user that has write access only to non-critical directories. Run the program as that user. If you are also interested in privacy, consider also restricting its read rights.

Answer 2

The wikipedia page for chroot may be a good start. It describes chroot and also provides links to a few, more thorough alternatives.

Answer 3

chroot is one possibility if you want to isolate it from everything else but still have an environment for it to run in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/chroot

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BasicChroot

Answer 4

You can use something like schroot and chroot the program, but anything of sufficient nastiness will bust out of that.

You best bet is probably a virtual machine (vmware or virtualbox) and taking a snapshot before compiling and running the program. That way you can roll back if something goes horribly wrong.

Answer 5

Check out seccomp. It was designed for this use case.

Answer 6

Geordi uses a combination of chroot and interception of syscalls to compile and then sandbox arbitrary code.

Answer 7

Run it on a non-networked computer that you will re-image once it's done. There is no safe way to run it on a machine and continue to trust that machine afterwards.