4 ms·

Does anyone have insight as to why they recommend only using Chrome, including using Tor with Chrome and not the Tor browser (fork of Firefox)? Is this just to

Does anyone have insight as to why they recommend only using Chrome, including using Tor with Chrome and not the Tor browser (fork of Firefox)? Is this just to keep things consistent or are there privacy/security concerns over using Firefox?

qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
I believe chrome does an outstandingly good job at sandboxing.
idlewords 9y ago
Firefox is less secure than Chrome, and the Tor browser is much more dangerous than Firefox. A secondary reason we recommend Chrome is that the FIDO security keys work with that browser, while I believe they don't work yet in Firefox.
- jimrandomh 9y ago
  Could you elaborate on how the Tor browser is more dangerous than Firefox?
  - idlewords 9y ago
    To quote tqbf on this site, 'Do NOT EVER use Tor Browser. It's the least safe browser you can use: a lagged fork of Firefox for which whole classes of security bugs are potentially WONTFIX'd, and also the only browser that goes out of its way to collect high-value targets.'
    - j_s 9y ago
      src: A Guide to Not Getting Hacked | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733698 (15735789)(Nov2017:175points,78 comments) A very similar conversation to this one, but with more criticism of the advice in the associated article.
jimrandomh 9y ago
Chrome has a process-sandbox architecture that is significantly protective against new exploits; Firefox's equivalent, Electrolysis, isn't ready yet. In the 2017 Pwn2Own competition, Firefox was cracked and Chrome wasn't. The Tor browser is almost certainly better at avoiding accidental disclosure of your IP address, but worse at general exploit-resistance. Making use of Tor in a way that fully protects their identity is probably beyond the capabilities of a Congressional candidate anyways, so it would at best create a sense of anonymity that was false.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 9y ago
  If we're really nerding out about browser security, it's important to understand that while Firefox's sandboxing is not as sophisticated as Chrome's, it's not a lack of sandboxing that puts Firefox behind Chrome (and probably Edge), but also all the other stuff that goes into browser security, most notably runtime hardening and ancillary vulnerability research. People tend to look for a simple explanation for these kinds of differences, like, "iPhones are more secure because they have a Secure Enclave", or "Chrome is more secure because it has better sandboxing". But the real answers are rarely that simple. There's a lot more that goes into both iPhone and Chrome security than those simple things.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    Can you elaborate as to what you mean by Chrome having better "runtime hardening"? For what it's worth, I tend to think the biggest issues are the weaker sandbox (the GPU driver is exposed in Firefox, which WebRender is taking a big step toward fixing) and, in the future, Site Isolation (which I think is oversold, but it would help sites like Gmail).
- grugq 9y ago
  I'm still a bit lost as to what legitimate use a Congressional candidate would have for anonymity. If they need someone to do adversarial research anonymously, they should "have people for that"... since if the anonymity is breached, it would expose only the deniable asset. "Rogue employee" or such... As for why Tor Browser Bundle sucks: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef5164845908 https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef51648... Plenty of things combined, but not least of which is that Mozilla only patches High + Critical bugs in long term stable release builds, so you can just chain Low + Medium known vulnerabilities together until you get access. The only safe way to use Tor is with a router acting providing a secure middle point for "upgrading" all traffic to Tor. That way if the end point is compromised, it cannot beacon information back w/o being forced through Tor. This is why I don't like software solutions that provide Tor access and are tenant on the same hardware. It simply means that one additional exploit breaks the system. A Tor router (a good one, none of the commercial ones are) will expose only the DHCP server [optional] and the Tor SOCKS5 proxy port. Leaving an attacker with only a very small attack surface: the Linux kernel network stack and the Tor daemon. A software solution with co-tenant router (such as Qubes, or Whonix) has the same attack surface plus a hypervisor and (potentially) a shared kernel interface (i.e. the entire kernel API). Tor Browser Bundle is even worse as there is no Tor router, simply an app that is configured to use Tor, and if it is compromised then the code executed by the attacker can elect not to use Tor as the system itself is networked. Tor has very few use cases IMHO, and since one of them is "purchasing drugs from a reputable source," I don't really see why Congressional candidates should ever use it themselves. A VPN, on the other hand, is different. I would actually extend the guide by @idlewords and say "install the Freedome VPN on all your iOS devices, enable it, buy the $30 a year service, and forget about it. You'll have a secure IKEv2 VPN to a reasonably[0] safe end point that is doing active filtering for malicious sites as well as some trackers and ad blocking (the source of most 'drive by malware.') This one app will make all public WiFi safe[1] to use, it will increase your privacy [by aggregating your traffic with other people's exiting that same IP], and help to reduce your exposure to known bad websites that serve malware." [0] 'reasonably safe end point' in that it is operated by F-Secure, not anonymous and potentially malicious agents. F-Secure has a reputation to maintain and actively sniffing traffic for secrets (e.g. Wikileaks) or inserting malware into downloads (e.g. various threat actors) would be the end of their business. They are probably capable of securing an end point as well as anyone else, and if you aren't technical enough to setup Algo VPN yourself then Freedome is a reasonable compromise. Vastly better than fly-by-night "bittorrent safe, logless!" "we put OpenVPN on a VPS" VPN companies. [1] yes, nothing is truly safe, the NSA is logging all encrypted traffic for years, chemtrails don't care about IPSec and jet fuel can't melt APs, thanks for your pedantic observation.
kylehotchkiss 9y ago
I am also curious as Chrome could be collecting some ads tracking data safari wouldn't be. Is it that easy to break into Safari still?

qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago

I believe chrome does an outstandingly good job at sandboxing.

idlewords 9y ago

Firefox is less secure than Chrome, and the Tor browser is much more dangerous than Firefox. A secondary reason we recommend Chrome is that the FIDO security keys work with that browser, while I believe they don't work yet in Firefox.

jimrandomh 9y ago
Could you elaborate on how the Tor browser is more dangerous than Firefox?
- idlewords 9y ago
  To quote tqbf on this site, 'Do NOT EVER use Tor Browser. It's the least safe browser you can use: a lagged fork of Firefox for which whole classes of security bugs are potentially WONTFIX'd, and also the only browser that goes out of its way to collect high-value targets.'
  - j_s 9y ago
    src: A Guide to Not Getting Hacked | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733698 (15735789)(Nov2017:175points,78 comments) A very similar conversation to this one, but with more criticism of the advice in the associated article.

jimrandomh 9y ago

Chrome has a process-sandbox architecture that is significantly protective against new exploits; Firefox's equivalent, Electrolysis, isn't ready yet. In the 2017 Pwn2Own competition, Firefox was cracked and Chrome wasn't. The Tor browser is almost certainly better at avoiding accidental disclosure of your IP address, but worse at general exploit-resistance. Making use of Tor in a way that fully protects their identity is probably beyond the capabilities of a Congressional candidate anyways, so it would at best create a sense of anonymity that was false.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 9y ago
If we're really nerding out about browser security, it's important to understand that while Firefox's sandboxing is not as sophisticated as Chrome's, it's not a lack of sandboxing that puts Firefox behind Chrome (and probably Edge), but also all the other stuff that goes into browser security, most notably runtime hardening and ancillary vulnerability research. People tend to look for a simple explanation for these kinds of differences, like, "iPhones are more secure because they have a Secure Enclave", or "Chrome is more secure because it has better sandboxing". But the real answers are rarely that simple. There's a lot more that goes into both iPhone and Chrome security than those simple things.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Can you elaborate as to what you mean by Chrome having better "runtime hardening"? For what it's worth, I tend to think the biggest issues are the weaker sandbox (the GPU driver is exposed in Firefox, which WebRender is taking a big step toward fixing) and, in the future, Site Isolation (which I think is oversold, but it would help sites like Gmail).
grugq 9y ago
I'm still a bit lost as to what legitimate use a Congressional candidate would have for anonymity. If they need someone to do adversarial research anonymously, they should "have people for that"... since if the anonymity is breached, it would expose only the deniable asset. "Rogue employee" or such... As for why Tor Browser Bundle sucks: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef5164845908 https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef51648... Plenty of things combined, but not least of which is that Mozilla only patches High + Critical bugs in long term stable release builds, so you can just chain Low + Medium known vulnerabilities together until you get access. The only safe way to use Tor is with a router acting providing a secure middle point for "upgrading" all traffic to Tor. That way if the end point is compromised, it cannot beacon information back w/o being forced through Tor. This is why I don't like software solutions that provide Tor access and are tenant on the same hardware. It simply means that one additional exploit breaks the system. A Tor router (a good one, none of the commercial ones are) will expose only the DHCP server [optional] and the Tor SOCKS5 proxy port. Leaving an attacker with only a very small attack surface: the Linux kernel network stack and the Tor daemon. A software solution with co-tenant router (such as Qubes, or Whonix) has the same attack surface plus a hypervisor and (potentially) a shared kernel interface (i.e. the entire kernel API). Tor Browser Bundle is even worse as there is no Tor router, simply an app that is configured to use Tor, and if it is compromised then the code executed by the attacker can elect not to use Tor as the system itself is networked. Tor has very few use cases IMHO, and since one of them is "purchasing drugs from a reputable source," I don't really see why Congressional candidates should ever use it themselves. A VPN, on the other hand, is different. I would actually extend the guide by @idlewords and say "install the Freedome VPN on all your iOS devices, enable it, buy the $30 a year service, and forget about it. You'll have a secure IKEv2 VPN to a reasonably[0] safe end point that is doing active filtering for malicious sites as well as some trackers and ad blocking (the source of most 'drive by malware.') This one app will make all public WiFi safe[1] to use, it will increase your privacy [by aggregating your traffic with other people's exiting that same IP], and help to reduce your exposure to known bad websites that serve malware." [0] 'reasonably safe end point' in that it is operated by F-Secure, not anonymous and potentially malicious agents. F-Secure has a reputation to maintain and actively sniffing traffic for secrets (e.g. Wikileaks) or inserting malware into downloads (e.g. various threat actors) would be the end of their business. They are probably capable of securing an end point as well as anyone else, and if you aren't technical enough to setup Algo VPN yourself then Freedome is a reasonable compromise. Vastly better than fly-by-night "bittorrent safe, logless!" "we put OpenVPN on a VPS" VPN companies. [1] yes, nothing is truly safe, the NSA is logging all encrypted traffic for years, chemtrails don't care about IPSec and jet fuel can't melt APs, thanks for your pedantic observation.

kylehotchkiss 9y ago

I am also curious as Chrome could be collecting some ads tracking data safari wouldn't be. Is it that easy to break into Safari still?