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I understand the sentiment and dislike laggy UIs, but browsers have been running millions of apps securely on billions of computers for ages. No browser exploit
by jeswin 9y ago
I understand the sentiment and dislike laggy UIs, but browsers have been running millions of apps securely on billions of computers for ages. No browser exploit has led to worldwide data compromise. In fact, being able to run untrusted code at this scale represents the pinnacle of security engineering feats.
There have also been plenty of exploits in applications written entirely with native code.
- eptcyka 9y agoWhilst there haven't been that many data breaches, I'd argue that's because the browser is operating at the edges of your architecture, not in the centre, where the data lies. However, to say that browsers are secure is pure nonsense. Browsers get exploited all of the time, I'd argue that this is not as big of an issue as it could be because browser vendors respond to new vulnerabilities very quickly. WebGL, for instance, is still a massive mess in terms of security.
- empath75 9y agoI guess you don’t remember internet explorer.
- blub 9y agoBrowsers can barely open a simple web page without getting owned. They're probably the number one infection vector nowadays... This has lead to some pretty bad hacks. I'm not sure what more you could want really, a vulnerability where people can be punched in the face over the internet?
- username223 9y ago> a vulnerability where people can be punched in the face over the internet? That sounds like a mild form of swatting, which is already a thing.
- twoodfin 9y agoIt seems to me that the one of the challenges in reaching that pinnacle was adequately quarantining browser-hosted code from local resources and capabilities. But frameworks like Electron are designed to expose the latter to the former, otherwise they’d just be WebKit in a window.