palant

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Apples and oranges. Android is supposed to isolate apps from each other (yes, theory). So a malicious app should only be able to steal data the user provides it with.

On the other hand, a single malicious extension will compromise the entire browser. Nothing you do on any website is any longer safe.

Not that I don’t think that Google should pay more attention to the apps in the Play Store. But allowing extensions to hide their functionality with remote code is plain negligent.

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MV3 makes it considerably harder to introduce a security vulnerability, but it doesn’t really help with outright malicious extensions. In the end this isn’t an issue which can be solved by technical means. It’s a moderation issue, and Google currently seems to be scaling back moderation despite not being great at it to start with.

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That question is answered, in the last section of the article. And: yes, they are selling it, as they admit in the privacy policy.

As I said: “according to many credible witnesses, not all of them anonymous. Heck, some of it is even on video.”

What is there to be gained you ask? Well, there is currently a creep in a position of power at FSF who is actively making women and other people feel unwelcome, effectively pushing them out of the community. By removing him from this position, making it clear that such behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, a much broader participation could be achieved. And then these "much bigger" issues you seem to care about have a better chance of being solved.

Unless of course your whole point was using whataboutism to defend your hero, because you think that past achievements always outweigh any harm he may be doing.

As I said, one device is enough.

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They have at least one device with an unencrypted copy of their data, likely two or more. They only need this passphrase to set up sync. If they ever forget it, they reset sync, set a new passphrase and re-upload the data. No nuking.

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Yes, they will probably ask Facebook then. Or check your web search history. There is more than one source for them to draw from. But you can shut down this huge source of your private information easily. You can deal with the rest of them later (all possible).

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Firefox Sync encrypts all data on the client side before sending it. Chrome Sync can do the same if you know which settings to use. 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane – every password manager worth their salt encrypts data locally (LastPass is the only one which failed really badly here). How is this rare and not something we should expect?

Funny thing is: declarative access to websites still allows for plenty of mischief if one wanted to do it. I’ve actually seen malicious extensions abuse that. Browsers might have to revisit the decision to ignore declarative access as far as the permission prompt goes.

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Yes, they fixed this particular issue (and a few more), the article mentions it. But the update I published today explains why Chrome Sync is still very bad privacy-wise (as opposed to outright horrible which it was back in 2018). https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-...

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Every ad blocker gets full and complete access to all your data. It needs that kind of access in order to … tada … remove ads. It’s really simple: ads are on all websites, so an ad blocker needs access to all websites.

You probably mean that Adblock Plus abuses this access? Surely this is something you have proof for? Here you can see an example of how this kind of thing looks like: https://palant.info/2023/06/05/introducing-pcvark-and-their-.... You can look around in my blog, there is more.

It has been a while since I’ve been involved with Adblock Plus. I sincerely doubt however that ABP’s privacy stance changed that much since I’ve left. But I’ll wait for you to find proof for your claims.

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They fixed this particular issue (and a few more), the article mentions it. But the update I published today explains why Chrome Sync is still very bad privacy-wise (as opposed to outright horrible which it was back in 2018). https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-...

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I’m fairly certain that these users didn’t leave it at reviews. There is a “Report abuse” form which one can use and which was certainly used here. If only someone were actually looking at these submissions…

It wasn’t really intended. I originally looked at ad blockers since I know that most of them are shady, that’s how I immediately found the PCVARK ad blockers. I stumbled upon these extensions because I was trying to find more PCVARK software – one of my queries turned up that translator extension. I realized that it wasn’t PCVARK but still malicious.

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Yes, Chrome uses Safe Browsing to flag malicious extensions. But they seem to use it very sparingly for some reason.

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Yes, Mozilla doesn’t publish the source code. Back when I was reviewing add-ons there (a long time ago), I did compile the supplied source and compared it with the submitted one. It was sometimes awkward when the tool in question didn’t produce reproducible builds but mostly ok.

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I have no idea what it takes to get “featured” but having seen how pretty much any extension gets this tag, including plenty of malicious ones – it’s pretty meaningless.

Unfortunately, an extension in use is expected to behave very differently from one that was merely installed. That’s the crux with observing software in sandboxes in order to determine its behavior.

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We aren’t talking about breaking out of the sandbox here, the extension sandbox stays intact. The problem is that this sandbox has plenty of privileges. And so Chrome attempts to restrict what code runs in this sandbox.

Technically speaking, they succeed – only the extension’s own code runs inside the sandbox here. But this is a mechanism aimed at preventing security vulnerabilities, not at combating outright malicious extensions. An extension can always download some data guiding its decisions. These extensions take it to the extreme, essentially turning that data into code.

As I said, outright malicious extensions will always find a way. I now discovered a newer variant of these extensions, this time using Manifest V3. And they still run arbitrary code: https://palant.info/2023/06/02/how-malicious-extensions-hide...

Yes, much better to let 55 million users blame the browser for redirecting search queries, excessive ads, erratic behavior and data leaks. :-)

Funny thing is: I can imagine Google being fine with everything on this list but the first point. When it comes to hijacking search, Google is absolutely no fun.

Back when I reviewed add-ons for Mozilla Add-ons, I did in fact verify that the source code produced the same build result as the extension submitted. Was tricky occasionally but usually worked well.

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Mozilla and Opera require source code to be uploaded along with the extension, there is some human component involved in the review there. My understanding is that the human review got considerably less over time however. According to an email I received lately, Mozilla is reintroducing pre-publication review for popular extensions however.

I always thought it to be odd that Google doesn’t ask for extension source code, even when an extension is flagged for review. No idea what kind of review they can perform this way.

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It’s easy: Google owns the browser, so they decide which websites are allowed to install extensions. And Google decided a while ago that the only way to ensure your safety is allowing only Chrome Web Store as installation source. That’s it, installing extensions from third-party sources is so awkward that nobody will do it. Besides, automatic updates wouldn’t work anyway.

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Well, Google has been introducing policy changes meant to restrict abuse of extension privileges for quite a while. It won’t help however as long as they don’t manage to enforce the policies effectively. These extensions have been at it for at least two years. It was already against Google’s policies back then. Users flagged these extensions back then already. Yet they remained in Chrome Web Store.

Note that I found one similar extension that was removed in March this year. I have no idea why Google removed it (it cannot be user complains) or why they didn’t search Chrome Web Store for similar code.

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Migration to Manifest V3 has been postponed, all these extensions (like most extensions in Chrome Web Store) are using Manifest V2.

Note that the changes in Manifest V3 are meant to prevent security vulnerabilities. Outright malicious extensions will always find a way.

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The Apple developer fee has little effect on malicious submissions, what it effectively does is preventing free (open source) software. You aren’t significantly safer, you are merely paying for software that would otherwise be available for free. Note that Google also has a developer fee for the Chrome Web Store, far more moderate however.

What helps is consistent human review, like Mozilla used to have it. But Google established that automated review should be enough, so there you are.

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Yes, nothing I wrote negates the need for other security precautions. Keeping around a software which is accessible from the internet while not installing any updates for it (the vulnerability in question was already two years old) – obviously a bad idea. Installing software updates timely is always the first step for everyone.

But to address a specific concern of uploading your passwords to the cloud, a strong master password is a solution. And: no, keeping all passwords stored in a local file is far less convenient but not necessarily more secure.

Neither are applications doing root CA installatin nonsense a fault of communication via a local web server. HTTPS isn’t required here, but they either have this hack in place for compatibility with decade old browsers – or they simply failed to revisit it.