Slashdot Mirror
Is There Room For a Secure Web Browser?
An anonymous reader points out an eWeek story about researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who are designing a new web browser based on security. The new software, code-named OP for Opus Palladianum, will separate various components of the browser into subsystems which are monitored and managed by the browser kernel. Quoting:
"'We believe Web browsers are the most important network-facing application, but the current browsers are fundamentally flawed from security perspective,' King said in an interview with eWEEK. 'If you look at how the Web was originally designed, it was an application with static Web pages as data. Now, it has become a platform for hosting all kinds of important data and businesses, but unfortunately, [existing] browsers haven't evolved to deal with this change and that's why we have a big malware problem.' The idea behind the OP security browser is to partition the browser into smaller subsystems and make all communication between subsystems simple and explicit."
you do mean the problem exists between keyboard and chair PEBKAC.... right?
similar to an I Dee 10 T error (ID10T).
users are so 404.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
It doesn't offer perfect security. Nothing offers perfect security. But at least with Lynx, you're getting rid of most problems in one swoop. And if Lynx still doesn't solve your security concerns, the next step would just be to unplug your entire family from the internet, replace their computers with typewriters, and mail their letters in a fake mailbox/shredder of your own construction. And then, may be, just may be, if you train your family well enough not to answer the doorbell, not to answer the phone, and not go out ever -- then your family will be more secure than most (although, they still won't be completely secure).
It's obvious something's wrong with most Internet software. Either the world is full of *inadequate programmers* or the problem is something more fundamental. I think we need to ask why an Internet application has to run in a browser? Why not make it a native (Windows, Linux etc.) application and only provide data to the browser (via HTTP) when it's necessary to expose it to the general public? This would make things a lot easier for the programmer and also provide significant security if the HTTP protocol is not used to transfer sensitive data across the Internet. Here's an example of the concept implemented in Delphi for Windows http://www.responsive.co.nz/source.html