#Mozilla firefox will not open websites code#As a consequence, less privileged code will need to ask more privileged code to perform operations which it itself cannot.įor example, a content process will have to ask the parent process to save a download because it does not have the permissions to write to disk. This multi-process architecture allows Firefox to separate more complicated or less trustworthy code into processes, most of which have reduced access to operating system resources or user files. Upon being launched, the Firefox web browser internally spawns one privileged process (also known as the parent process) which then launches and coordinates activities of multiple (web) content processes – the parent process is the most privileged one, as it is allowed to perform any action that the end-user can. Background on Current Browser Architecture To make things worse, using a Spectre-like attack would allow to query and access data from the website.ĭespite existing security mitigations, the only way to provide memory protections necessary to defend against Spectre-like attacks is to rely on the security guarantees that come with isolating content from different sites using the operating system’s process separation. Suppose you have two websites open – and As illustrated in the diagram above, with current web browser architecture it’s possible that web content from both sites ends up being loaded into the same operating system process. In the worst case scenario, a malicious site might execute a Spectre-like attack to gain access to memory of the other site. Without Site Isolation, Firefox might load a malicious site in the same process as a site that is handling sensitive information. Let’s take a closer look at the following example which demonstrates how an attacker can access your private data when executing a Spectre-like attack. Going forward, it was clear that we needed to fundamentally re-architecture the security design of Firefox to mitigate future variations of such vulnerabilities. Back when the attacks were announced publicly, Firefox teams promptly reduced the precision of high-precision timers and disabled APIs that allowed such timers to be implemented to keep our users safe. While band-aid countermeasures deployed by OS, CPU and major web browser vendors quickly neutralized the attacks, they came with a performance cost and were designed to be temporary. The researchers exploited fundamental assumptions about modern hardware execution, and were able to demonstrate how untrusted code can access and read memory anywhere within a process’ address space, even in a language as high level as JavaScript (which powers almost every single website). In early 2018, security researchers disclosed two major vulnerabilities, known as Meltdown and Spectre. To fully protect your private information, a modern web browser not only needs to provide protections on the application layer but also needs to entirely separate the memory space of different sites – the new Site Isolation security architecture in Firefox provides those security guarantees. Unfortunately, the web evolves and so do the techniques of malicious actors. the same-origin policy which prevents adversaries from accessing such information when loaded into the same application. In more detail, whenever you open a website and enter a password, a credit card number, or any other sensitive information, you want to be sure that this information is kept secure and inaccessible to malicious actors.Īs a first line of defence Firefox enforces a variety of security mechanisms, e.g. This new security architecture allows Firefox to completely separate code originating from different sites and, in turn, defend against malicious sites trying to access sensitive information from other sites you are visiting. Site Isolation builds upon a new security architecture that extends current protection mechanisms by separating (web) content and loading each site in its own operating system process. To protect you against new types of attacks from malicious sites and to meet the security principles of Mozilla, we set out to redesign Firefox on desktop. Like any web browser, Firefox loads code from untrusted and potentially hostile websites and runs it on your computer.
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