171–180 of 189 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even as much as I want my old Firefox extensions back I reaaly don't feel I can trust a small bunch of developers to keep something as complicated as the old Firefox patched in this day and age. Am I wrong?
I'm afraid you're https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22399 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=22270&p=168663
I believe many people should attempt to create their own web extension, even if they don't publish it. In my younger years, I used to crack and hack software just for fun. Those were my Softice years. Later, when Opera was not Chromium based, I also had several site customisations, since it was very easy to add my own JS and CSS to any web site. Nowadays, I have 4 extensions created and tailored for my needs. One tha…
- One would switch to an existing tab with the same URL, instead of opening a duplicate. This made it easier to click URLs in error/debug messages without making the browser unmanageable (IIRC this was just a copy/paste of someone else's extension, which didn't work without me fiddling it)
- One would add keybindings to the output of Drupal integration tests. These tests would say things like 'visit X', 'click the Y button', 'enter Z in the form', etc. and would save each page, so if a test failed each step could be viewed in a browser. The only problem was this is tedious, so I made an extension which bound the left/right cursor keys to stepping through these pages. Made it much easier to skip through the setup and get to the bug (e.g. adding items to cart, when the problem is in checkout).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Extensions should be able to have their permissions limited by domain (e.g. to customize YouTube or Reddit) at a minimum. They already can: extension authors can specify that their extension only operates on specific URL's. The problem is that most extensions are designed to work on all web sites, so you have to choose between security and convenience. Most users pick the latter and trust the former. This model wor…
> This model works pretty well overall since harmful extensions never take long before getting flagged by the community. No, this model works pretty well for stealthy extensions which take malicious actions without getting detected.
> The modern browser extension API has done a good job balancing extensibility with security No, it hasn't. Almost every single extension I install tells me some variant of "This extension can intercept and modify all of your browsing traffic". That's not "well balanced", it's completely broken. This is happening clearly for extensions by well intentioned people that do not need those permissions . I can't help but c…
This is fear mongering. Every website could try 0-days exploits or drive-by downloads . Every app can abuse its permissions and track you/upload your photos/eavesdrop on your conversations. Every neighbor you have could spy on you through your windows/note when you come and go/follow you. Your grocery shop owner can poison your food. Etc etc. You can't blindly trust anything "from the wild" yet you can't really live…
That's an unfair comparison. Any piece of software could try and 0day you. The point is that in a permission-based system, the permissions for browser extensions are in practice far too permissive to the point of being broken.
>You can't blindly trust anything "from the wild" yet you can't really live without it.
The point about permissions is to provide granularity to trust. I may trust an app to use my camera without trusting it to track my location in the background.
>Every app can abuse its permissions and track you/upload your photos/eavesdrop on your conversations.
This is the best comparison - mobile phone permissions - and on this front browser extensions are far worse. The majority of every single extension I install wants complete control to everything. In contrast, most apps only require a few things as appropriate. Yes, there are those flashlight apps which require _every_ permission, and those are basically the standard of extensions.
It should be added that UXSS (basically a malicious extension) is basically an RCE in the browser which in some cases is more beneficial than a full RCE, e.g. easier to steal banking creds.
> The modern browser extension API has done a good job balancing extensibility with security No, it hasn't. Almost every single extension I install tells me some variant of "This extension can intercept and modify all of your browsing traffic". That's not "well balanced", it's completely broken. This is happening clearly for extensions by well intentioned people that do not need those permissions . I can't help but c…
This is fear mongering. Every website could try 0-days exploits or drive-by downloads . Every app can abuse its permissions and track you/upload your photos/eavesdrop on your conversations. Every neighbor you have could spy on you through your windows/note when you come and go/follow you. Your grocery shop owner can poison your food. Etc etc. You can't blindly trust anything "from the wild" yet you can't really live…
> The modern browser extension API has done a good job balancing extensibility with security No, it hasn't. Almost every single extension I install tells me some variant of "This extension can intercept and modify all of your browsing traffic". That's not "well balanced", it's completely broken. This is happening clearly for extensions by well intentioned people that do not need those permissions . I can't help but c…
+1000 Extensions should be able to have their permissions limited by domain (e.g. to customize YouTube or Reddit) at a minimum. And I'd also really like a way to track both injected scripts and elements so that they wouldn't be able to make any HTTP requests without additional permissions, not even an tag if the src isn't just a data URL or local extension resource. E.g. I want to be able to install an extension that…
This would break adblockers, which are by far the most commonly used extensions
On the contrary: Browser extensions are horribly overrated. They're a massive security problem (the number one place malware is found on a computer) often for the benefit of replacing the word "cloud" with "butt". They are rarely adequately audited or restricted and have far more access to private data than anyone generally realizes.
I agree that extensions do need to be adequately audited more, though Firefox does audit every browser extension they offer through their store. Safari similarly does, and Chrome just needs to catch up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1000 Extensions should be able to have their permissions limited by domain (e.g. to customize YouTube or Reddit) at a minimum. And I'd also really like a way to track both injected scripts and elements so that they wouldn't be able to make any HTTP requests without additional permissions, not even an tag if the src isn't just a data URL or local extension resource. E.g. I want to be able to install an extension that…
> Extensions should be able to have their permissions limited by domain (e.g. to customize YouTube or Reddit) at a minimum. They already can: extension authors can specify that their extension only operates on specific URL's. The problem is that most extensions are designed to work on all web sites, so you have to choose between security and convenience. Most users pick the latter and trust the former. This model wor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
not even a little bit. the advances that were made in multi-process firefox and reducing memory usage and speeding up firefox are all on the backs of webextensions existing. it freed up the developers from having to worry that some internal api getting changed will break the extensions. it simply had to go.
Memory usage and speeding up firefox have nothing to do with keeping the browser patched. Plenty of people thought it was fast enough and fine with memory for their use case, but very few people will be fine with gaping security holes.
yeah? they are tangential goals but that's the problem. in moving away from browser extensions to webextensions you have a completely diverging codebase that's almost impossible to keep patched because the architecture is fundamentally incompatible and the patches will not be able to be applied in all but the most trivial of cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If plugins were allowed for apps, pretty sure there'd be a better story around privacy today . Honest question : Can you expand on how this would work please? If anything, extensions as in chrome extensions is something I try to avoid as much as possible : giving access to all of my data to a third party extension promising that is going to increase my privacy but that I need to trust 100% with a complete access is…
> Honest question : Can you expand on how this would work please? Such a thing is already possible today. Some require root, some require breaking PlayStore's terms of use. One such example is: XPrivacyLua [0] by the creator of NetGuard. It helps fake location data, hide contacts and calendar, fake device-id, IMEI, MAC addresses etc on a per-app basis. Another example is how VPN in Android [1][2] is widely used to bl…
Repackaging, leveraging a security flaw to use xposed, etc, all of these add more vectors that can compromise your data.
You need to have complete trust in the person that wrote these, way more trust than just in the creators of an app that can just use the permissions you give them :/