12 ms·

Linux sandboxing improvements in Firefox 57

276 points by rvern 9y ago

alex_duf 9y ago
I'm so hyped by Firefox 57, haven't felt like that about a webbrowser since Firefox 1.5
- dbcooper 9y ago
  Don't set the UI density to "touch" then - tab closing animation is very clunky. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407462 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407462
- DC-3 9y ago
  I hope it picks up momentum among the broader public - while it can feel like the entirity of HN is on Firefox Nightly, there's a much larger leap to be made in overturning the broadly held 'common sense' view that Chrome is the superior browser. I don't doubt that such a sea change in public consensus is possible - it happened several years ago with the surge of Chrome in about 2010 [1]. Chrome was markedly quicker than the competition in its day, but I believe that Firefox 57 makes at least as big a performance leap in day-to-day usage over its rivals as Chrome did when it came to prominence. For much of the last ten years, Chrome has been the go-to browser for the tech-saavy user - Firefox is now as well placed as it could ever be to reclaim that crown. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Browser_usage_share,_2009%E2%80%932016,_StatCounter.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Browser_usage_share,...
  - krisgenre 9y ago
    I primarily use Chrome just for the reason that it has better UI than Firefox on Linux. The developer tools on Firefox is too ugly, they definitely need a more compact design.
    - callahad 9y ago
      Firefox 57 has a new UI ("Photon") that you might like, and the DevTools are seeing significant UI/UX work during their rewrite from XUL to HTML (https://github.com/devtools-html/ https://github.com/devtools-html/). You can see some mockups on Victoria Wang's Twitter: https://twitter.com/violasong/status/926189788486557697 https://twitter.com/violasong/status/926189788486557697
      - nol13 9y ago
        Anyone got a rough ETA for when the CSD stuff will make it into main? (or any other hack to hide title bar in MATE/xfce once hidecaptiontitelbarplus addon breaks? sorry to beat dead-horse topic) http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/firefox-client-side-decoration-coming-soon http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/firefox-client-side-decor...
        RedCrowbar 9y ago
        Looks like it's going to be available in Firefox 58 behind a pref: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1415481 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1415481
        jhasse 9y ago
        Already in Firefox 57 on Fedora 27
        nol13 9y ago
        Tried installing the nightly CSD build from flatpak and made sure flags were on in about:config. Still a title bar in Ubuntu MATE 16.04 :/
    - bluejekyll 9y ago
      I actually much prefer the 57 UI options. I use the dark theme and it conserves more space than the tabs with chrome. The icon indicators also are really nice. At this point the only reason I use Chrome is b/c of Google Meet (which doesn’t support Firefox). The only thing I wish was better in the beta is battery life/usage. Safari is still king in terms of its effect on you battery. Edit: to be clear I use Firefox beta on Linux and macOS regularly.
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    I guess I was one of the Firefox holdouts for years now. After Chrome came out and the adblocker on it was more than useless (I used it since day 1 of public release) I ditched it for Firefox and never looked back. I only kept Chrome for web development to test across different browsers, or to open a new "session" in another browser. Now that Firefox has containers I really don't care for Chrome in that respect though. I'm glad Mozilla is doing things to put themselves back on the spotlight, they've done some great work over the years.
    - theandrewbailey 9y ago
      I thought I was the only person who never stopped using Firefox.
- kevincox 9y ago
  Why, with the ability to write powerful extensions removed it is basically a second Chrome now. I think WebExtensions were a good idea, but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. Hopefully they will add an escape hatch in a future release but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder how long staying on nightly will allow "legacy" extensions. But sure, a bit of performance is nice I guess.
  - kevingadd 9y ago
    I hate WebExtensions, but Mozilla has at least demonstrated a commitment to improve and expand that API instead of letting it rot like Google has. They seem to be adding essential features to it so I think most of the good extensions will be possible within a few releases. I still wish they hadn't crammed it down our throats before it was ready, though. Jetpack extensions worked fine.
    - Sylos 9y ago
      They unfortunately sort of had to rush it. They needed to deprecate legacy extensions, because the majority of those are multiprocess-incompatible and they needed multiprocess to stop the bleeding of users. It's really quite visible, multiprocess was rolled out in Firefox 48 on the 2nd August 2016: https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpaf=&qpcustom=Firefox&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=202&qpnp=25&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpaf=&qpc...
  - s_kilk 9y ago
    >> but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. Honesty I think this is a good move.
    - kevincox 9y ago
      > The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. This is simply not true as evidenced by the fact that Nightly still has the legacy extension API and the improved performance. That being said FF was slowing down to keep extensions compatible. This is why I think WebExtensions are a good idea. They should be the recomended path with promised future compatibility. Then FF can not worry as much about refactoring the internals as there are fewer extensions that would be broken and they "signed up" for it. I would rather have a faster FF and have to patch VimFX every couple of releases then have FF show down development for fear of breaking things. That being said loosing the extensions that gave FF it's magic is not a good tradeoff in my opinion.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  Firefox 57 is the version that finally breaks Pentadactyl and many other extensions permanently.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Hmm, I've been using it since if was Phoenix(?), version 0.7 or so IIRC. I'm not convinced they're going in the right direction. Annoying dicking around adding new stuff as default that should be extensions (ones you can remove, and that you choose to add). Then in FF56 on Kubuntu I've noticed a slow down, a lot of lagging for me; but much worse most of [18/20] the add-ons I use are now "legacy" which gives a sense of foreboding that I'll be left choosing long established add-ons _xor_ bugfix/security updates. We'll see of course, perhaps I'm just getting a little too cynical having been browsing since the days Lynx, Mosaic and Netscape were new tech.
  - alex_duf 9y ago
    I think they had to make the tough call of breaking compatibility in order to move faster. I understand that a lot of devs and power users are annoyed but hopefully we're not the only target audience, we just happen to be a quite vocal in places like HN.
- Insanity 9y ago
  I've just switched to the nightly after reading your comment. Really liking it so far, it's been years since I've used firefox.
- DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
  if you apply the mindset to the OS level you've essentially got QubesOS[0] I love what mozilla does here :) [0] Step-0 of https://iotdarwinaward.com/post/improve-your-privacy-in-age-of-mass-surveillance/ https://iotdarwinaward.com/post/improve-your-privacy-in-age-...
- lukaa 9y ago
  I like new Firefox but if Firefox is removing search bar than address bar should take over all functionality from search bar and it doesn't.In search bar there is easy way to add new search engine with + sign and in address bar there isn't.
shmerl 9y ago
> We could not block the web content rendering entirely from reading the filesystem because Firefox still uses GTK directly - we draw webpage HTML widgets using the same theming as the native desktop. Is there a way to build Firefox without GTK? For example for something like Plasma Mobile? It would be good if there was some fallback mode where Firefox would render UI elements using HTML itself, without relying on UI toolkits.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  Presumably GTK is not just used from drawing visible elements but also for things like file pickers, print windows etc.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Which sucks so horribly that several distros actually maintain a full fork of Firefox where all those are patched to use Qt instead.
    - mook 9y ago
      Interesting; do you know which distros do that? I know Nokia started the Qt stuff (for Maemo), but wasn't aware that anybody was continuing to maintain it. But I haven't looked at things at a level that would have let me know in quite a while.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        SailfishOS developers were dragging it along, but after Mozilla dropped support for IPC Embedlite[1] (they never even accepted it officially), I think they got stuck with outdated Gecko. No idea what they are doing about it. 1. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI
      - kuschku 9y ago
        The SUSE distros are patching Firefox to use QT dialogs for everything, but kept the GTK core loop.
ComodoHacker 9y ago
security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist Are extensions allowed to change that?
- Sylos 9y ago
  I don't know for sure, but I heavily doubt it, as it would open up so many potential security holes. The standard way to access files for extensions seems to be with Native Messaging: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Native_messaging https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Na... Basically make the user install a small program on their PC, then your extension talks to that program, the program reads out the file that you need and then hands it back to your extension.
- Manishearth 9y ago
  Not WebExtensions (which are the only kind of extension allowed on Firefox 57+ unless you change another pref). I mean, Firefox even has a `security.turn_off_all_security_so_that_viruses_can_take_over_this_computer` pref (used in testing; you won't see it in about:config but IIRC you can manually add it. Don't.). Prefs that break security are not new :)
  - ComodoHacker 9y ago
    Oh, really? I hope not in production builds, at least. Defense in depth concept is not new either.
    - Manishearth 9y ago
      You also need an environment variable to be set for it to work. But yes, it seems to be something you can flip in production. The argument being that if you're in a position to flip prefs you already can break security in a million ways. It's not something you can accidentally flip either. (The pref doesn't actually "let viruses take over the computer", it just turns off all the security checks)
      - 9y ago
WalterGR 9y ago
How does this compare to IE's Protect Mode, Enhanced Protection Mode, and Edge's execution in an app container?
dm319 9y ago
Can anyone tell me how secure web browsers are on linux generally. I was looking at the pwn2own results and was quite impressed with the edge compromise that got out of the host OS it was running in. However, I didn't see any web browsers on linux being compromised - is that because it is harder, or no-one bothered?
- nilved 9y ago
  Zero. Nil. None. Wide open. Like any other computer with power supply.
- bugmen0t 9y ago
  The browser exploits that sell well and deliver a good show are rated by impact. Thus, folks go for windows.
- lima 9y ago
  Comparable to Windows. Windows is a high-profile target for web browsing so you're seeing more exploits. Web browser escapes usually target the operating system kernel in order to break out of the sandbox. Chrome can reduce its attack surface on Linux using seccomp, and while there's a win32 syscall filter on Windows 10, I'm not sure if Chrome uses it. Windows has stronger kernel self protection features than Linux, but also more attack surface. Chrome uses Linux namespaces (like LXC/Docker/...) for isolation in addition to seccomp-bpf. Chrome is by far the most secure one right now, but as evidenced by this blog article, Firefox is catching up.
  - johncolanduoni 9y ago
    The Chromium sandbox supports the Win32k mitigation, though it’s possible it’s not enabled at runtime.
  - ryuuchin 9y ago
    Chrome disables all win32k syscalls in its renderer/extension/plugin processes (at the very least flash and pdf). This has been the default for a while now. I believe the specific win32k syscall filter you're referring to (where you can white/black list specific syscalls) is still only accessible to Microsoft applications (Edge uses it).
beefhash 9y ago
I feel like I should point out that Firefox won't be getting backported to Debian stable[1]. Until the next Debian stable, it seems that Firefox ESR 52 will be the only version of Firefox. [1] https://mozilla.debian.net/ https://mozilla.debian.net/
- JeanMarcS 9y ago
  Thanks for that information. I use unstable and a part of me always want to go for a stable version. As a Firefox user, maybe not after all. I guess there's a price in each choice.
  - Drdrdrq 9y ago
    I find it better to run stable/testing and install Firefox separately. It works great.
- MrRadar 9y ago
  Doesn't Debian follow the ESR releases for their stable branches? E.g. when support for ESR 52 ends they'll upgrade stable releases to ESR 59?
  - kzrdude 9y ago
    Yes. Current stable did not have Firefox ESR 52 when current stable was released, but it has it now. Debian is providing Firefox ESR 52 even in oldstable (check security upgrades) https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr
  - beefhash 9y ago
    Normally, yes. However, something on that page concerns me: "Jessie and Stretch backports of Firefox release and beta are gone because of the requirement of rust to build them, which is not available in Jessie or Stretch. Please update your apt sources to use Firefox ESR instead." I'm not sure how that Rust requirement and ESR 59 will play together; I'll assume they won't play together very well.
- 9y ago
nimbius 9y ago
I've not been inclined to use this browser since they started with pocket, moved to offering a voice and video chat service, forced PulseAudio as a mandatory dependency and eventually enacted mandatory opt-in telemetry in the browser. sandboxing is great, but if the site is spooky enough im just going to load it in elinks/lynx and grok the text. Chromium also has sandboxing, and if youre really paranoid enough, surf from suckless.org is a webkit style do-it-yourself browser thats fairly reliable.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
vermaden 9y ago
People tend to assume that if Firefox 57 or other version will be faster then Chrome, then a lot people would then start to use Firefox instead of Chrome. As much as I would like to see that its not gonna happen, and I am writing this as a Firefox user. Remember what 'REAL' Opera 12 did in its times comparing to Chrome or Firefox? It loaded pages faster, used less memory, was most standards compliant and also came with bundled torrent client, and mail client and RSS client and ... and having 100+ tabs opened DID NOT EVEN SLOWED IT! ... and guess what, both Firefox and Chrome had more users while Opera had about 4-5%. It did not mattered if it was faster or better. Currently Opera is just a Chrome with different skin, so I moved to Firefox with Midori and Iridium as 'backups'.
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  I had a few times in past years when I got so irritated by sluggishness of Firefox that I moved to Chromium, despite of the completely unusable tab UI it has when compared to Firefox's (even without addons). Well, it always turned out that Chromium with 8GB RAM and my browsing habits is even worse, so I returned back to Firefox, but if I had 16 or 32GB of RAM it might have turned out to be a different story. I'm so glad Firefox catches up. Instead of thinking "I wish Chromium had better UI and I had more RAM", I can just be happy with my browser, embracing my workflow instead of trying to adapt it to the available tools.
- adwf 9y ago
  I wouldn't be that pessimistic. The key difference is that Firefox used to have a lot of market share that it lost to Chrome, whereas Opera never really had any to begin with.
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    It had market share when Google gave it free advertising on _every single Google search_
- konart 9y ago
  >will be faster then Chrome Well, for now it is still much slower than Chrome https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-quantum-bench&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-...
k__ 9y ago
OT: Do the Quantum changes get into the Android version or is this a completly different software?
- r3bl 9y ago
  There's a planned Photon redesign that already landed in Nightly on Android, but, if I remember correctly, it won't make it on time for 57 desktop version (probably around 58 mark). I am not familiar with the other improvements. Disclaimer: Affiliated with Mozilla, but not with the Firefox team.
  - abrowne 9y ago
    It's rolled out to Firefox beta (so yes, version 58) on Android now. (FWIW I've used beta for years and very rarely had any issues.)
- MrRadar 9y ago
  IIRC they plan to deploy the Quantum enhancements on Android but it may lag a few versions behind their availability on Desktop since they don't want to have to include both the Quantum and non-Quantum codepaths (so the Quantum changes could be disabled in case bugs turn up) which would bloat their APK size (they try to keep it as small as possible since many Android devices have very little on-board storage).

276 points by rvern 9y ago

alex_duf 9y ago

I'm so hyped by Firefox 57, haven't felt like that about a webbrowser since Firefox 1.5

dbcooper 9y ago
Don't set the UI density to "touch" then - tab closing animation is very clunky. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407462 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407462
DC-3 9y ago
I hope it picks up momentum among the broader public - while it can feel like the entirity of HN is on Firefox Nightly, there's a much larger leap to be made in overturning the broadly held 'common sense' view that Chrome is the superior browser. I don't doubt that such a sea change in public consensus is possible - it happened several years ago with the surge of Chrome in about 2010 [1]. Chrome was markedly quicker than the competition in its day, but I believe that Firefox 57 makes at least as big a performance leap in day-to-day usage over its rivals as Chrome did when it came to prominence. For much of the last ten years, Chrome has been the go-to browser for the tech-saavy user - Firefox is now as well placed as it could ever be to reclaim that crown. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Browser_usage_share,_2009%E2%80%932016,_StatCounter.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Browser_usage_share,...
- krisgenre 9y ago
  I primarily use Chrome just for the reason that it has better UI than Firefox on Linux. The developer tools on Firefox is too ugly, they definitely need a more compact design.
  - callahad 9y ago
    Firefox 57 has a new UI ("Photon") that you might like, and the DevTools are seeing significant UI/UX work during their rewrite from XUL to HTML (https://github.com/devtools-html/ https://github.com/devtools-html/). You can see some mockups on Victoria Wang's Twitter: https://twitter.com/violasong/status/926189788486557697 https://twitter.com/violasong/status/926189788486557697
    - nol13 9y ago
      Anyone got a rough ETA for when the CSD stuff will make it into main? (or any other hack to hide title bar in MATE/xfce once hidecaptiontitelbarplus addon breaks? sorry to beat dead-horse topic) http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/firefox-client-side-decoration-coming-soon http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/firefox-client-side-decor...
      - RedCrowbar 9y ago
        Looks like it's going to be available in Firefox 58 behind a pref: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1415481 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1415481
      - jhasse 9y ago
        Already in Firefox 57 on Fedora 27
        nol13 9y ago
        Tried installing the nightly CSD build from flatpak and made sure flags were on in about:config. Still a title bar in Ubuntu MATE 16.04 :/
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    I actually much prefer the 57 UI options. I use the dark theme and it conserves more space than the tabs with chrome. The icon indicators also are really nice. At this point the only reason I use Chrome is b/c of Google Meet (which doesn’t support Firefox). The only thing I wish was better in the beta is battery life/usage. Safari is still king in terms of its effect on you battery. Edit: to be clear I use Firefox beta on Linux and macOS regularly.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  I guess I was one of the Firefox holdouts for years now. After Chrome came out and the adblocker on it was more than useless (I used it since day 1 of public release) I ditched it for Firefox and never looked back. I only kept Chrome for web development to test across different browsers, or to open a new "session" in another browser. Now that Firefox has containers I really don't care for Chrome in that respect though. I'm glad Mozilla is doing things to put themselves back on the spotlight, they've done some great work over the years.
  - theandrewbailey 9y ago
    I thought I was the only person who never stopped using Firefox.
kevincox 9y ago
Why, with the ability to write powerful extensions removed it is basically a second Chrome now. I think WebExtensions were a good idea, but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. Hopefully they will add an escape hatch in a future release but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder how long staying on nightly will allow "legacy" extensions. But sure, a bit of performance is nice I guess.
- kevingadd 9y ago
  I hate WebExtensions, but Mozilla has at least demonstrated a commitment to improve and expand that API instead of letting it rot like Google has. They seem to be adding essential features to it so I think most of the good extensions will be possible within a few releases. I still wish they hadn't crammed it down our throats before it was ready, though. Jetpack extensions worked fine.
  - Sylos 9y ago
    They unfortunately sort of had to rush it. They needed to deprecate legacy extensions, because the majority of those are multiprocess-incompatible and they needed multiprocess to stop the bleeding of users. It's really quite visible, multiprocess was rolled out in Firefox 48 on the 2nd August 2016: https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpaf=&qpcustom=Firefox&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=202&qpnp=25&qptimeframe=M https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpaf=&qpc...
- s_kilk 9y ago
  >> but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. Honesty I think this is a good move.
  - kevincox 9y ago
    > The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. This is simply not true as evidenced by the fact that Nightly still has the legacy extension API and the improved performance. That being said FF was slowing down to keep extensions compatible. This is why I think WebExtensions are a good idea. They should be the recomended path with promised future compatibility. Then FF can not worry as much about refactoring the internals as there are fewer extensions that would be broken and they "signed up" for it. I would rather have a faster FF and have to patch VimFX every couple of releases then have FF show down development for fear of breaking things. That being said loosing the extensions that gave FF it's magic is not a good tradeoff in my opinion.
pmoriarty 9y ago
Firefox 57 is the version that finally breaks Pentadactyl and many other extensions permanently.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Hmm, I've been using it since if was Phoenix(?), version 0.7 or so IIRC. I'm not convinced they're going in the right direction. Annoying dicking around adding new stuff as default that should be extensions (ones you can remove, and that you choose to add). Then in FF56 on Kubuntu I've noticed a slow down, a lot of lagging for me; but much worse most of [18/20] the add-ons I use are now "legacy" which gives a sense of foreboding that I'll be left choosing long established add-ons _xor_ bugfix/security updates. We'll see of course, perhaps I'm just getting a little too cynical having been browsing since the days Lynx, Mosaic and Netscape were new tech.
- alex_duf 9y ago
  I think they had to make the tough call of breaking compatibility in order to move faster. I understand that a lot of devs and power users are annoyed but hopefully we're not the only target audience, we just happen to be a quite vocal in places like HN.
Insanity 9y ago
I've just switched to the nightly after reading your comment. Really liking it so far, it's been years since I've used firefox.
DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
if you apply the mindset to the OS level you've essentially got QubesOS[0] I love what mozilla does here :) [0] Step-0 of https://iotdarwinaward.com/post/improve-your-privacy-in-age-of-mass-surveillance/ https://iotdarwinaward.com/post/improve-your-privacy-in-age-...
lukaa 9y ago
I like new Firefox but if Firefox is removing search bar than address bar should take over all functionality from search bar and it doesn't.In search bar there is easy way to add new search engine with + sign and in address bar there isn't.

shmerl 9y ago

> We could not block the web content rendering entirely from reading the filesystem because Firefox still uses GTK directly - we draw webpage HTML widgets using the same theming as the native desktop. Is there a way to build Firefox without GTK? For example for something like Plasma Mobile? It would be good if there was some fallback mode where Firefox would render UI elements using HTML itself, without relying on UI toolkits.

robin_reala 9y ago
Presumably GTK is not just used from drawing visible elements but also for things like file pickers, print windows etc.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Which sucks so horribly that several distros actually maintain a full fork of Firefox where all those are patched to use Qt instead.
  - mook 9y ago
    Interesting; do you know which distros do that? I know Nokia started the Qt stuff (for Maemo), but wasn't aware that anybody was continuing to maintain it. But I haven't looked at things at a level that would have let me know in quite a while.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      SailfishOS developers were dragging it along, but after Mozilla dropped support for IPC Embedlite[1] (they never even accepted it officially), I think they got stuck with outdated Gecko. No idea what they are doing about it. 1. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI https://wiki.mozilla.org/Embedding/IPCLiteAPI
    - kuschku 9y ago
      The SUSE distros are patching Firefox to use QT dialogs for everything, but kept the GTK core loop.

ComodoHacker 9y ago

security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist Are extensions allowed to change that?

Sylos 9y ago
I don't know for sure, but I heavily doubt it, as it would open up so many potential security holes. The standard way to access files for extensions seems to be with Native Messaging: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Native_messaging https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Na... Basically make the user install a small program on their PC, then your extension talks to that program, the program reads out the file that you need and then hands it back to your extension.
Manishearth 9y ago
Not WebExtensions (which are the only kind of extension allowed on Firefox 57+ unless you change another pref). I mean, Firefox even has a `security.turn_off_all_security_so_that_viruses_can_take_over_this_computer` pref (used in testing; you won't see it in about:config but IIRC you can manually add it. Don't.). Prefs that break security are not new :)
- ComodoHacker 9y ago
  Oh, really? I hope not in production builds, at least. Defense in depth concept is not new either.
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    You also need an environment variable to be set for it to work. But yes, it seems to be something you can flip in production. The argument being that if you're in a position to flip prefs you already can break security in a million ways. It's not something you can accidentally flip either. (The pref doesn't actually "let viruses take over the computer", it just turns off all the security checks)
    - 9y ago

WalterGR 9y ago

How does this compare to IE's Protect Mode, Enhanced Protection Mode, and Edge's execution in an app container?

dm319 9y ago

Can anyone tell me how secure web browsers are on linux generally. I was looking at the pwn2own results and was quite impressed with the edge compromise that got out of the host OS it was running in. However, I didn't see any web browsers on linux being compromised - is that because it is harder, or no-one bothered?

nilved 9y ago
Zero. Nil. None. Wide open. Like any other computer with power supply.
bugmen0t 9y ago
The browser exploits that sell well and deliver a good show are rated by impact. Thus, folks go for windows.
lima 9y ago
Comparable to Windows. Windows is a high-profile target for web browsing so you're seeing more exploits. Web browser escapes usually target the operating system kernel in order to break out of the sandbox. Chrome can reduce its attack surface on Linux using seccomp, and while there's a win32 syscall filter on Windows 10, I'm not sure if Chrome uses it. Windows has stronger kernel self protection features than Linux, but also more attack surface. Chrome uses Linux namespaces (like LXC/Docker/...) for isolation in addition to seccomp-bpf. Chrome is by far the most secure one right now, but as evidenced by this blog article, Firefox is catching up.
- johncolanduoni 9y ago
  The Chromium sandbox supports the Win32k mitigation, though it’s possible it’s not enabled at runtime.
- ryuuchin 9y ago
  Chrome disables all win32k syscalls in its renderer/extension/plugin processes (at the very least flash and pdf). This has been the default for a while now. I believe the specific win32k syscall filter you're referring to (where you can white/black list specific syscalls) is still only accessible to Microsoft applications (Edge uses it).

beefhash 9y ago

I feel like I should point out that Firefox won't be getting backported to Debian stable[1]. Until the next Debian stable, it seems that Firefox ESR 52 will be the only version of Firefox. [1] https://mozilla.debian.net/ https://mozilla.debian.net/

JeanMarcS 9y ago
Thanks for that information. I use unstable and a part of me always want to go for a stable version. As a Firefox user, maybe not after all. I guess there's a price in each choice.
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  I find it better to run stable/testing and install Firefox separately. It works great.
MrRadar 9y ago
Doesn't Debian follow the ESR releases for their stable branches? E.g. when support for ESR 52 ends they'll upgrade stable releases to ESR 59?
- kzrdude 9y ago
  Yes. Current stable did not have Firefox ESR 52 when current stable was released, but it has it now. Debian is providing Firefox ESR 52 even in oldstable (check security upgrades) https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr
- beefhash 9y ago
  Normally, yes. However, something on that page concerns me: "Jessie and Stretch backports of Firefox release and beta are gone because of the requirement of rust to build them, which is not available in Jessie or Stretch. Please update your apt sources to use Firefox ESR instead." I'm not sure how that Rust requirement and ESR 59 will play together; I'll assume they won't play together very well.
9y ago

nimbius 9y ago

I've not been inclined to use this browser since they started with pocket, moved to offering a voice and video chat service, forced PulseAudio as a mandatory dependency and eventually enacted mandatory opt-in telemetry in the browser. sandboxing is great, but if the site is spooky enough im just going to load it in elinks/lynx and grok the text. Chromium also has sandboxing, and if youre really paranoid enough, surf from suckless.org is a webkit style do-it-yourself browser thats fairly reliable.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

vermaden 9y ago

People tend to assume that if Firefox 57 or other version will be faster then Chrome, then a lot people would then start to use Firefox instead of Chrome. As much as I would like to see that its not gonna happen, and I am writing this as a Firefox user. Remember what 'REAL' Opera 12 did in its times comparing to Chrome or Firefox? It loaded pages faster, used less memory, was most standards compliant and also came with bundled torrent client, and mail client and RSS client and ... and having 100+ tabs opened DID NOT EVEN SLOWED IT! ... and guess what, both Firefox and Chrome had more users while Opera had about 4-5%. It did not mattered if it was faster or better. Currently Opera is just a Chrome with different skin, so I moved to Firefox with Midori and Iridium as 'backups'.

seba_dos1 9y ago
I had a few times in past years when I got so irritated by sluggishness of Firefox that I moved to Chromium, despite of the completely unusable tab UI it has when compared to Firefox's (even without addons). Well, it always turned out that Chromium with 8GB RAM and my browsing habits is even worse, so I returned back to Firefox, but if I had 16 or 32GB of RAM it might have turned out to be a different story. I'm so glad Firefox catches up. Instead of thinking "I wish Chromium had better UI and I had more RAM", I can just be happy with my browser, embracing my workflow instead of trying to adapt it to the available tools.
adwf 9y ago
I wouldn't be that pessimistic. The key difference is that Firefox used to have a lot of market share that it lost to Chrome, whereas Opera never really had any to begin with.
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  It had market share when Google gave it free advertising on _every single Google search_
konart 9y ago
>will be faster then Chrome Well, for now it is still much slower than Chrome https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-quantum-bench&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-...

k__ 9y ago

OT: Do the Quantum changes get into the Android version or is this a completly different software?

r3bl 9y ago
There's a planned Photon redesign that already landed in Nightly on Android, but, if I remember correctly, it won't make it on time for 57 desktop version (probably around 58 mark). I am not familiar with the other improvements. Disclaimer: Affiliated with Mozilla, but not with the Firefox team.
- abrowne 9y ago
  It's rolled out to Firefox beta (so yes, version 58) on Android now. (FWIW I've used beta for years and very rarely had any issues.)
MrRadar 9y ago
IIRC they plan to deploy the Quantum enhancements on Android but it may lag a few versions behind their availability on Desktop since they don't want to have to include both the Quantum and non-Quantum codepaths (so the Quantum changes could be disabled in case bugs turn up) which would bloat their APK size (they try to keep it as small as possible since many Android devices have very little on-board storage).