Mozilla shouldn't copy Chrome's permission prompt for extensions

Even if they copy the warnings verbatim, I’d like to at least suggest adapting some sort of icon set. Preferably with color coding: yellow for frequently requested permissions, red for infrequently requested permissions.

Anything really, that let’s you know at glance what you’re about to install, without having to read a bullet point list.

Colors are fine but unique icons would be even better. If it potentially affects user’s privacy anything but a scary looking big brother eye would be inappropriate.

See for example Facebook’s permission dialog from 2010: https://hyuz.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/gsh-1427.jpg

The article mentions that CWS’s users rely on reputation. That is 100% true. You basically have to go into at least the Review section to see if there are any ‘surprises’ included inside. There was a time you couldn’t install a mouse gesture extension without compromising your privacy.

The scary part is all your extensions are self-updating. If the author doesn’t change the permissions they can include a backdoor at any time.

I don’t suggest they review the extensions manually. Instead what I would like to see, personally, is just a simple setting to only show open source extensions.

At least with AMO it’s very simple to check the source of any extension you like. It’s right there on the extension’s page. Disabling automatic updates and reviewing the source code is something I’ve done in the past.

If you combine an easily accessible source and a comment section this alone will increase security by a significant margin.

> Yes. But the user should be made aware of the consequence of their action. Do they realize that installing a password manager means granting access to all their data to a third party. Is this author reliable? What do other users think of the author? Has anyone reviewed the code for this? These are all questions potential users should ask.

No. That is the point I and the article am making. If the addon store has a review process in place (again, Firefox has this), it is possible to verify that the password manager is not leaking data to the third party. The answer to "has anyone reviewed the code for this" is yes.

> What if your extension has a web-component ( say your password manager backs up passwords to the cloud)? Mozilla cannot review your server code.

Yes, in which case they can say that it grants access to all your passwords. A password manager that encrypts it correctly won't need to. These are semantic permissions, so you can differentiate between the two.

> I have reread the article and haven't found anything that backs this assertion. Indeed the author seems to say : Mozilla vouches for me, so you trust me with all your stuff too. From article :

"For example, a reviewer could determine whether the extension is merely modifying webpage behavior or actually extracting data from it. " -- this is exactly more finer grained than "can access everything". Addons that don't need any sort of access permission can still be sandboxed to not be allowed to access them. It's not clearly spelt out in the article, but from what I've heard/read the system is planned to be something like "If you don't need any dangerous permissions, you don't need review and we will sandbox you. If you need something that can be abused, there will be a review component." This article proposes that the review component be used to further improve the UX of the permissions displayed to the user.

You bring up a valid point about trusting the reviewers. Remember that since this is more finer grained, Chrome's coarser machine-verifiable sandboxing permission levels will still exist underneath. It would be interesting to expose a mode where it shows the "if you don't trust the reviewers, these are the software-enforced permissions the app has".

> : Sandboxing is simply good security practice. Even if the author is not malicious, but in case an extension is exploited due to a bug, the damage done by a well-sandboxed extension is limited by the permissions granted. In firefox such an exploit could hoover all your data, credit card info & passwords from all your websites and data from you harddrive as well.

The article doesn't say it's going to avoid sandboxing. It's building a finer-grained semantic system on top of the existing review process and sandboxing system.

> Edit: I want to point out that this article is really looking after the interests of the developer, and not after the interests of the user.

How? An addon review process is explicitly worse for developers. This article is all about exposing better UX for permissions, for the user. So that they don't get desensitized to overly broad permission requests.

I feel that you're lacking some context on the proposal here; but I'm not sure what.

Maybe I'm the only one but I want "ask me every time unless I specify otherwise" permissions

A password manager doesn't need to read all my websites. It only needs to read/modify the moment I press "fill in my password". Same with a "screen capture and upload to cloud" extension, a "bookmark" extension, a "post to my feed" extension. Yes an ad blocker needs all permissions. The rest don't and I wish I could be asked or at least distinguish between the permission to read everything and the permission to read on click

I think the biggest trouble is that the vast majority of useful browser extensions need to read and/or modify the content of web pages. Often both. So the ability to "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit" is a really common use case for extensions in general.

I'd love to see some user controls on extensions. A great many ad blockers have a feature built in that allows you to disable them on particular websites to work around cases where the blocker has broken the site inadvertently. I want to see this in reverse: I'd like to be able to very easily say to my browser, "OK, this youtube extension can run on youtube.com, and also on *.tumbler.com to make some change to embedded youtube players on people's blogs, but nowhere else." This isn't even particularly advanced to implement: the extension can simply be disabled by default, and either prompt to activate through some browser-controlled trigger, or wait until the user turns the extension on. I think that would stand a fair, usable middle ground between the more common all-or-nothing approach to that particular permission.

That's a great idea. The implementation could look similar to how Firefox handles plugins today, offering the option to "Always activate", "Ask to activate", and a way to say "Always allow for this domain". Other permissions could still be handled with the iOS or Android approach.