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Hyugga

Member

From: Santiago, Chile

Registered: 2010-03-26

Posts: 335

Firefox extensions and security

I've been studying about internet security lately and i found this document http://www.cs.ru.nl/bachelorscripties/2 … curity.pdf about firefox extensions and security issues. The document is really disturbing in many ways...
It literally says that any extensions you have installed can stole data from webpages you see. In fact, the author develops a extension that actually stole passwords.
The document itself it's outdated, but, have mozilla improved the sandboxing technology in firefox? How can we know if the extensions we use stole data from us?
Can we trust in mozilla's extesions revision?

Sorry if you notice my poor english.

Gcool

Member

Registered: 2011-08-16

Posts: 1,456

Re: Firefox extensions and security

That is a good example of the problems with "trust" on the internet and why it's so difficult to control. The firefox extensions are just one example, but the issues also reach much higher than that (best example being certificate authorities which in essence are just pointless from a trust perspective).

You basically have 2 options to deal with this:

1) You check the source code of every piece of software you download/install and use some common sense while doing this.
2) You place your trust in a 3rd party (Mozilla in this case) who does the necessary reviews/checks.

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Burninate!