←back to thread

Less is safer: How Obsidian reduces the risk of supply chain attacks

(obsidian.md)
429 points saeedesmaili | 5 comments | 19 Sep 25 22:02 UTC | HN request time: 1.196s | source
Show context
gejose ◴[19 Sep 25 23:42 UTC] No.45308131[source]▶
This is one way to look at it, but ignores the fact that most users use third party community plugins.

Obsidian has a truly terrible security model for plugins. As I realized while building my own, Obsidian plugins have full, unrestricted access to all files in the vault.

Obsidian could've instead opted to be more 'batteries-included', at the cost of more development effort, but instead leaves this to the community, which in turn increases the attack surface significantly.

Or it could have a browser extension like manifest that declares all permissions used by the plugin, where attempting to access a permission that's not granted gets blocked.

Both of these approaches would've led to more real security to end users than "we have few third party dependencies".

replies(19): >>45308149 #>>45308208 #>>45308212 #>>45308222 #>>45308224 #>>45308241 #>>45308572 #>>45308600 #>>45308749 #>>45310219 #>>45310642 #>>45310881 #>>45310991 #>>45311185 #>>45311760 #>>45311782 #>>45312975 #>>45313054 #>>45314194 #
1. dtkav ◴[19 Sep 25 23:55 UTC] No.45308241[source]▶
I'm developing an Obsidian plugin commercially. I wish there was a higher tier of vetting available to a certain grade of plugin.

IMO they should do something like aur on Arch Linux and have a community managed plugin repo and then a smaller, more vetted one. That would help with the plugin review time too.

replies(1): >>45310435 #
2. netghost ◴[20 Sep 25 04:39 UTC] No.45310435[source]▶
Just out of curiosity, what's the plugin? Are there folks interested in paying for plugins?
replies(1): >>45310591 #
3. dtkav ◴[20 Sep 25 05:14 UTC] No.45310591[source]▶
The plugin is called Relay [0] -- it makes Obsidian more useful in a work setting by adding real-time collaboration.

One thing that makes our offering unique is the ability to self-host your Relay Server so that your docs are completely private (we can't read them). At the same time you can use our global identity system / control plane to collaborate with anyone in the world.

We have pretty solid growth, a healthy paid consumer base (a lot of students and D&D/TTRPG), and starting to get more traction with businesses and enterprise.

[0] https://relay.md

replies(1): >>45311231 #
4. bdzr ◴[20 Sep 25 07:22 UTC] No.45311231{3}[source]▶
Are you worried about being sherlocked at all? I know "multiplayer" is on their official roadmap.
replies(1): >>45311477 #
5. dtkav ◴[20 Sep 25 08:19 UTC] No.45311477{4}[source]▶
yeah, definitely.

It might not be the most strategic move, but i want to build cool and useful tools, and the Obsidian folks are a big inspiration.

I hope there's a way to collaborate and/or coexist.