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Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

winrumors.com

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Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#91

Post by spullara »

snprbob86 wrote: post #80
Locke1689 wrote: post #13

Wow, this thread is turning into another security-clueless developer freakout. Microsoft very clearly laid out reasons why they believe that WebGL presents possible security vulnerabilities. While GPU security isn't my area of expertise, the driver issues seem very plausible. If someone wants to actually address Microsoft's points in this thread then that would be great.

Shaders are the big vulnerability I know of. Any game developer will tell you: It's pretty easy to accidentally craft a shader that will totally stall particular GPUs, taking down the entire windowing environment, if not the entire system. With malicious intent, shaders are a giant gaping DoS attack waiting to happen. Beyond that, the shader compiler backends are supplied by third parties because they generate hardwa…

Those, like activex controls, require the user to agree to install something that can do whatever to their system. WebGL would be available to any web site.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#92

Post by nkassis »

andybak wrote: post #49

Looks like O3D would have been a better approach after all. Did Google back the wrong horse?

As far as I know this would also have been possible in o3d. My current app,stated out on o3d but I think the webgl move was smart. Now if they could maintain the o3d-webgl library they wrote for the change, i would be really happy. I feel that they abandoned the o3d crowd and a pretty good library.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#93

Post by drivebyacct2 »

r00fus wrote: post #90
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>thanks for ditching the open standard h264 on Chrome I think that someone may have lied to you when they explained the words "open" or "standard". Also, why am I "looking at" MSFT/AAPL/GOOG for in relation to HTML/CSS/JS apps? They fact that many are still native? Google's apps for iOS are web based, and I'm sure iCloud apps for Android will be web based. Microsoft just got done demoing HTML5/CSS3 applications for W…

> I think that someone may have lied to you when they explained the words "open" or "standard". h.264 is not royalty free, but it is open and a standard (from Ars: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/googles-dropping-h26... ) "In the traditional sense, H.264 is an open standard. That is to say, it was a standard designed by a range of domain experts from across the industry, working to the remit of a standards or…

I guess I'll blame arstechnica for the misunderstanding then. I'm sorry, but I have an exceedingly difficult time calling anything "open" when they sit around and sue people or make promises not to sue them for arbitrary windows of time, due to the fact that they (the consortium) hold patents that they use to troll for profits.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#94

Post by pmjordan »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #60
msy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well either Google and Mozilla are knowingly shipping insecure code or Microsoft is, to some degree, wrong. Given the history of the organisations in question I'm going to assume Microsoft wrong or not telling the whole story until we hear a response from Moz or Google.

Microsoft has the perspective of the entire OS from top to bottom. Google and Firefox have the perspective of their respective applications. Given the concerns Microsoft is voicing (and they aren't the first to voice them) are well below the application itself, I tend to trust Microsoft more on this one.

What about Apple? They're clearly working on WebGL support for Safari. They have at least equal insight into the whole stack, considering the ship the GPU drivers with the OS.

Then there's XNA in Silverlight. If they believe in the security of that, why not build WebGL on top of it? Probably because they're in direct competition with one another, and Microsoft wants Silverlight to win.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#95

Post by m_eiman »

spullara wrote: post #91
snprbob86 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shaders are the big vulnerability I know of. Any game developer will tell you: It's pretty easy to accidentally craft a shader that will totally stall particular GPUs, taking down the entire windowing environment, if not the entire system. With malicious intent, shaders are a giant gaping DoS attack waiting to happen. Beyond that, the shader compiler backends are supplied by third parties because they generate hardwa…

Those, like activex controls, require the user to agree to install something that can do whatever to their system. WebGL would be available to any web site.

That should be easy enough to duplicate, just make the feature one of those "Site X wants to use WebGL. [Allow] [Deny]" things. It would make it useless for ads and such, of course, but it seems that most people want to use it for games. Might be workable.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#96

Post by robin_reala »

hartror wrote: post #89
nextparadigms wrote: post #3

Whatever. Whoever makes WebGL games will benefit from 50% of the total browser market share, and this market share will keep increasing as I doubt the new versions of IE (9/10) will replace the older IE browsers, especially since the new ones only work on certain Windows versions. Whether Microsoft embraces WebGL or not, it's irrelevant, because they'd only add like 5% market share they have with IE9, anyway. I think…

But can Google and Mozilla ignore the security concerns that are a inherent part of WebGL?

No, they can deal with them. The only inherent thing about security concerns exposed by WebGL is that there will be them, not that they can’t be fixed.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#97

Post by [deleted] »

pmjordan wrote: post #94
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has the perspective of the entire OS from top to bottom. Google and Firefox have the perspective of their respective applications. Given the concerns Microsoft is voicing (and they aren't the first to voice them) are well below the application itself, I tend to trust Microsoft more on this one.

What about Apple? They're clearly working on WebGL support for Safari. They have at least equal insight into the whole stack, considering the ship the GPU drivers with the OS. Then there's XNA in Silverlight. If they believe in the security of that, why not build WebGL on top of it? Probably because they're in direct competition with one another, and Microsoft wants Silverlight to win.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#98

Post by [deleted] »

pmjordan wrote: post #94
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has the perspective of the entire OS from top to bottom. Google and Firefox have the perspective of their respective applications. Given the concerns Microsoft is voicing (and they aren't the first to voice them) are well below the application itself, I tend to trust Microsoft more on this one.

What about Apple? They're clearly working on WebGL support for Safari. They have at least equal insight into the whole stack, considering the ship the GPU drivers with the OS. Then there's XNA in Silverlight. If they believe in the security of that, why not build WebGL on top of it? Probably because they're in direct competition with one another, and Microsoft wants Silverlight to win.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#99

Post by hootmon »

This is as usual for a korpo giant press release, complete BS. What is is really saying is that MS is not going to work with WebGL like they would any other open standard in preference for their own proprietary formats. This of course is the fascist company that is more than happy to hand over backdoor keys to any power with enough cash where the only security they are concerned with is their own financial security.

Is WebGL perfect no. Does it need the help many developers to overcome some of it's shortcomings, yes. Are there many MS fanboies around, yes, but fewer everyday.

What a crock.

Re: Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’

#100

Post by bad_user »

pmjordan wrote: post #94
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has the perspective of the entire OS from top to bottom. Google and Firefox have the perspective of their respective applications. Given the concerns Microsoft is voicing (and they aren't the first to voice them) are well below the application itself, I tend to trust Microsoft more on this one.

What about Apple? They're clearly working on WebGL support for Safari. They have at least equal insight into the whole stack, considering the ship the GPU drivers with the OS. Then there's XNA in Silverlight. If they believe in the security of that, why not build WebGL on top of it? Probably because they're in direct competition with one another, and Microsoft wants Silverlight to win.

Silverlight's integration with the host browser, DOM and Javascript is pretty good.

I'm pretty sure you could build a WebGL API on top of Silverlight by yourself. It would suck, but it is possible.

That's why I always thought Silverlight is pretty cool as a technology, as compared to Flash. Among other things, a Silverlight plugin could also allow you to serve OGG Theora videos to users.

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