What is sandwine?

sandwine is a command-line tool to run Windows applications on GNU/Linux that offers more isolation than raw Wine and more convenience than raw bubblewrap. It uses Wine and bubblewrap (>=0.8.0), it does not replace them. sandwine is Software Libre written in Python 3, and is licensed under the "GPL v3 or later" license.

Installation

# pip3 install sandwine

Usage Examples

Install Winamp 5.66: no networking, no X11, no sound, no access to ~/* files

# cd ~/Downloads/
# sha256sum -c <(echo 'ac70a0c8a2928c91400b9ac3774b331f1d700f3486bab674dbd09da6b31fe130  winamp566_full_en-us.exe')
# WINEDEBUG=-all sandwine --dotwine winamp/:rw ./winamp566_full_en-us.exe /S /D='C:\Program' 'Files' '(x86)\Winamp' '5.66'

(The weird quoting in /D='C:\Program' 'Files' '(x86)\Winamp' '5.66' is documented behavior for NSIS.)

Run installed Winamp: with sound, with nested X11, no networking, no ~/* file access

# sandwine --pulseaudio --x11 --dotwine winamp/:rw --pass ~/Music/:ro --configure -- winamp

Argument --configure will bring up winecfg prior to Winamp so that you have a chance at unchecking these two boxes:

• Graphics:
  • Allow the window manage to *decorate* the windows
  • Allow the window manage to *control* the windows

If Winamp crashes right after showing the main window, run it once more, there is some Wine bug at work here.

Run Geiss Screensaver: with sound, with host X11 (careful!), no networking, no ~/* file access

sandwine --host-x11-danger-danger --pulseaudio --retry -- ./geiss.scr /S

--host-x11-danger-danger make sandwine talk to the host X11 server, which would expose you to keyloggers so please re-visit your threat model before using --host-x11-danger-danger.

--retry is used to start programs a second time that consistently crash from graphics issues in a fresh Wine environment the first but not the second time. Potentially a bug in Wine, needs more investigation.

PS: The Geiss Screensaver has its GitHub home at https://github.com/geissomatik/geiss .

Run wget: with networking, no X11, no sound, no access to ~/* files

# sandwine --network --no-wine -- wget -S -O/dev/null https://blog.hartwork.org/

Argument --no-wine is mostly intended for debugging, but is needed here to invoke non-Wine wget.

Under the Hood

sandwine aims to protect against Windows applications that:

• read and leak personal files through/to the Internet
• read and leak keystrokes from other running applications (related post)
• modify/destroy personal files
• modify/destroy system files

To achieve that, by default the launched application:

• Sees no files in ${HOME} and/or /home/ (unless you pass --pass PATH:{ro,rw} for a related directory).
• Does not have access to the internet (unless you pass --network).
• Does not have access to your local X11 server (unless you enable some form of X11 integration, ideally nested X11).
• Does not have access to your sound card.

So what is shared with the application by default then?

What is Exposed by Default?

Files

Environment Variables

• ${DISPLAY}
• ${HOME}
• ${HOSTNAME} (with random 12-hex-digits value)
• ${PATH} (with known-unavailable entries removed)
• ${TERM}
• ${USER}

sandwine features include:

• A focus on security, usability, transparency
• Support for nested X11 provided by:
  • X2Go nxagent (seamless)
  • Xephyr
  • Xnest
  • Xvfb (invisible)
• Support for PulseAudio
• Support for /etc/resolv.conf provided by:
  • NetworkManager
  • systemd-resolved

Threat Model and Known Limitations

• If your life depends on the sandbox, please consider using a virtual machine rather than sandwine, e.g. because your username is exposed to the running application and depending on your threat model, that may be too much already.
• sandwine is not intended for use with known-malicious software, viruses, malware.
• sandwine has not seen any known external security audits, yet.
• sandwine relies on bubblewrap for its security, so it can only be as secure as bubblewrap.
• sandwine does not limit the set of syscalls that the application can do. bubblewrap supports arguments --seccomp and --add-seccomp-fd to go further on that end, but sandwine does not use them so far.
• sandwine does not keep the application from using loads of RAM, CPU time and/or disk space. If your concerns include denial of service, you need protection beyond sandwine.
• sandwine relies on sane file permissions in the places that are shared read-only. If you have files in e.g. /etc that contain credentials but are readable by unprivileged users, sandwine will do nothing to block that read access.
• If the Windows application to be run expects a GNU/Linux environment and includes Linux Kernel exploit code, then that exploit is not likely to be stopped by sandwine.
• If you manually allow the sandboxed application to communicate with an unsandboxed application and the latter executes commands for the former, then the sandbox cannot prevent privilege escalation. Think of a model like the Docker daemon where whoever can talk to the Docker daemon can become root. If you use sandwine with something like that, sandwine will have a problem.
• Start-up time below 200ms is not a goal.

Reporting Vulnerabilities

If you think you found a vulnerability in sandwine, please reach out via e-mail so we can have a closer look and coordinate disclosure.

Sebastian Pipping, Berlin, 2023