6 ms·

> Resilience doesn't sell out your privacy with "acceptable ads". Resilience won't be blocked by your web browser's developers. Excellent. I'm glad to see uBlo

• gruez 7y ago
  >OTOH, in the longer run it makes sense for ad blockers & similar tools to be ran as a wholly separate process, offering one more layer of separation. what's the advantage of that?
  • dexen 7y ago
    (Hopefully) the OS enforces memory protection between the adblock process and any HTTP client process, thus limiting attacks to only the data that resides in, or flows through, the adblock process. With a bit more advanced setup, you could also completely cut off the adblock process from accessing any files or any other resources related to the browser, further nailing down security. Sure, it is possible to have similar (or equivalent) setup for browser plugins, but it requires some special engineering done in the browser - and in that scenario no other apps benefit from the protection. Let's not forget there's many more crucial HTTP user agents than just the web browser.
    • gruez 7y ago
      >(Hopefully) the OS enforces memory protection between the adblock process and any HTTP client process, thus lowering the direct attack surface to only the data that resides in, or flows through, the adblock process. >With a bit more advanced setup, you could even completely cut off the adblock process from accessing any files or any other resources related to the browser, further nailing down security. How would that even work? The adblocking process has full access to whatever's being passed through it, and therefore it can eavesdrop or tamper (eg. inject malicious js) with the contents. >Sure, it is possible to have similar (or equivalent) setup for browser plugins, but it requires some special engineering done in the browser - and in that scenario no other apps benefit from the protection. Let's not forget there's much more crucial HTTP user agents than just the browser. Sounds useful, but it's a lot like dns based adblockers or hosts file, only worse because it only works locally, and only for applications that support/respect the proxy settings.
      • dexen 7y ago
        >>With a bit more advanced setup, you could even completely cut off the adblock process from accessing any files or any other resources related to the browser, further nailing down security. >How would that even work? The adblocking process has full access to whatever's being passed through it, and therefore it can eavesdrop or tamper (eg. inject malicious js) with the contents. A web browser is so much more than just the network traffic. Consider the mouse & keyboard input, the browsing history, the cache, the security credential store, the connection to display, GPU, USB and Bluetooth devices, microphones & cameras... the list goes on. This includes ability to read and write local files, start new processes, compile and run code. And then there are other HTTP user agents, like automatic software update tools. Most of this functionality shouldn't be needed by, nor accessible to, an ad blocker. Lastly, you could put much stricter resource usage limits (CPU time, operating memory) on an adblocking process than on a web browser, thwarting whole classes of resource exhausting attacks. >only worse because it only works locally You can apply varying levels of restricting any net traffic not passing through the adblock, up to and including dropping any such traffic. Ability to ad-filter HTTP traffic of an email client, RSS reader (i know, 2020) and similar user agents would be good.
        • gruez 7y ago
          >A web browser is so much more than just the network traffic. Consider the mouse & keyboard input, the browsing history, the cache, the security credential store, the connection to display, GPU, USB and Bluetooth devices, microphones & cameras... the list goes on. Access to those resources are either gated behind a permission (which adblockers shouldn't have access to), or can be accessed by any website, in which case a malicious ad blocker can exploit by injecting its malicious js into the http response. >Lastly, you could put much stricter resource usage limits (CPU time, operating memory) on an adblocking process than on a web browser, thwarting whole classes of resource exhausting attacks. Seems theoretical to me. If your adblocker is a cryptominer, you probably have bigger issues. If whatever site you're going to is mounting DoS attacks on your adblocker, you probably don't want to stay on the site anyways. >You can apply varying levels of restricting any net traffic not passing through the adblock, up to and including dropping any such traffic. Ability to ad-filter HTTP traffic of an email client, RSS reader (i know, 2020) and similar user agents would be good. I'm not doubting whether it works, it's just that it's worse (or marginally better) than dns/hosts adblockers.
• aswan 7y ago
  > I'm glad to see uBlock Origin getting some much needed competition, Why does uBO need competition? It appears to me that it offers the best combination of features and performance out there. Moreover, the choice to implement as a proxy has some serious drawbacks, features like uBO's cosmetic filters won't be practical to implement in a proxy.
  • farisjarrah 7y ago
    Competition in any space is extremely valuable. If for whatever reason uBlock Origin went away tomorrow there would be a void to fill. Furthermore, competition drives innovation. A separate project may figure out a better or more efficient way to accomplish the same goals and they could potentially share their findings with the uBlock team or vice versa and everyone benefits.
    • StavrosK 7y ago
      > If for whatever reason uBlock Origin went away tomorrow there would be a void to fill. If for whatever reason uBlock Origin went away tomorrow there would be a fork. uBlock Origin is the second (or third, I forget) fork of the original project.
      • pythux 7y ago
        uBlock Origin is still almost exclusively maintained by the original author: Raymond Hill. He was already behind uBlock and is now working on uBlock Origin (the original uBlock being basically stale).
    • pythux 7y ago
      This. It is exactly what happened about a year ago when this performance study[1] was published. In the months that followed, uBlock Origin, Brave and Adblock Plus all worked pretty hard on improving the performance of their content blocking engine, and used the benchmark and open-source dataset from the study to measure their optimizations. The result is that now, all users of either of these extensions benefit from a better and faster product, thanks to emulation between competing projects. This would not necessarily happen in the absence of competition. In the end, users benefit. (Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of the performance study) [1]: https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html