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Microsoft Research Showcases New Browser Prototype, "Gazelle"
Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has opened up about "Gazelle," a new browser prototype of theirs that is modeled after the underlying concepts of operating system design. "A research team led by Microsoft's Helen Wang recently published a report about an experimental browser prototype called 'Gazelle' that uses processes to isolate page content elements originating from different domains. It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models. But is it an operating system, Microsoft Research's analogue to Google's Chrome OS? Not quite."
Oh boy! A more secure browser from the pros at secure browsing, Microsoft.
Microsoft focusing on developing a browser-based OS is directly opposed to their current business model, which involves forcing users to purchase an operating system. Microsoft's focus has always been on for-pay, offline applications. Taking a precautionary foray into Google's future business model seems to show that they are at the very least wary of Google's future plans.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
MS's idea is nice, but it's not going to help a lot of things very much. It'll help when plug-ins and helper apps go runaway, being in a separate process they won't be able to block the browser itself. But from a security standpoint the problem isn't that those embedded objects are in the same process, it's that they have access to the same page and the DOM elements in it and the data structures of the browser itself. And that won't be solved just by putting them in their own process, not without isolating them from the rest of the page and browser to a degree that'll break a lot of Microsoft's technologies.
After reading that article, I'm much less excited than I was. I had assumed it was something similar to Google Chrome OS, but it's not even something that seems like it turned out very well for Microsoft, or something that can have yet undiscovered major issues on the horizon. The idea seems to have turned out overly complex to work around the limitations with the approach, and all that in a resource hungry .NET application. It says they're hopeful to get the per-tab RAM usage down from 16 MB, but I have to wonder by how much? This approach doesn't seem much better than running a process-separated browser written in Java. Ugh.
I have a hard time understanding the decision to use .NET, but perhaps it was a security decision? Anyway, it doesn't sound like the optimal choice, when the project all revolves around low-level features like isolating the tabs even further.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
IE doesn't support web standards, but people still use it because it has Microsoft's name. Maybe this will get people to switch to a (hopefully) standards-compliant browser.
It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models.
That's a new definition of security of which I was previously unaware. Just about anyone who's spent five minutes trying to do multi-process, multi-thread, unsyncronized accesses, cloud, spin-locks, etc., will tell you that no, there are no inherent security advantages. It'll be less secure unless you make a dedicated effort from project start just to keep it on par with single-threaded. The only "advantage" it has is that when it fails it'll crash more slowly, with a wider variety of obscure error messages, hammering the operating system as it tanks with the extra overhead as it does so. Yes, it might be slightly harder to develop an exploit because it's not using a generic flaw, but some complicated and obscure flaw -- but that's not more secure; Only badly designed.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Some of Microsoft's technologies - like data files that can execute code - need to be broken. It is sometimes necessary to sacrifice convenience for a degree of security. The personal computer industry has been slowly coming to terms with this for the last 10 years or so, it would be nice if we don't have to wait another 10 before it all works properly.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's largely a .NET application that uses Internet Explorer's "Trident" rendering engine.
Granted, it has made significant improvements but I still haven't been that impressed by the Trident engine. Sometimes I wish they'd use someone else's engine so that they'd be kept up-to-date on standards AND you'd have the same browsing experience on multiple browsers.
I guess I can understand why they don't though... they'd be up a creek without a paddle if they used Webkit and people stopped developing for it or licensed Gecko from Firefox and they went under or yanked Microsoft's license.
Ummm... Isn't a Gazelle kind of a fast animal?
Since this browser runs at half the speed of the not exactly quick IE 7, shouldn't it be given a code name more in keeping with it's actual speed? I've always thought Ubuntu had a cute naming scheme going. I hereby dub this software Turgid Tortoise
Unless if by new you mean:
From february at least, seems older to me: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=79655
Has already appeared on slashdot and a hundred other tech sites.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/22/1724244
Its hard to google before you run to try and get a story submitted isn't it?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
What they don't tell you is that the part of the gazelle it most closely emulates is the stomach; which, in ruminants, implements four-chambered process isolation in order to safely digest large quantities of low-quality input. This seemed like a valuable feature for a web browser.
Well, we were so eager to get rid of segments that by the time 80386 more or less perfected them, we dumped them for flat mode. Now they are gone in x86-64, likely never to return. What a terrible mistake! If we had different segments, we could have a lightweight browser process with user space threads assigning segments to different domains on the page. Instead of trying to get protection by wrapping software sandboxes around everything like Java, C# or something else does, we could have the CPU actually doing it. If only I could go back in time and say to myself, as I fumed over the likes of ES:CX... and say, no no, this will actually turn about to be a good thing in the future!
This is my sig.
Clearly they named it Gazelle because ultimately they expect it to be killed off by safari.
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
Beware of urban legends : http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.asp
Coca-Cola's translation in Chinese is especially good and very successful. As it is composed of very simple characters, it is also one of the first words I learned :)
Another classic urban legend is the Chevrolet Nova : http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
Bing is translated with biying in Chinese (meaning roughly : "must answer", sorry I didn't manage to use sinogramms to add that little scholarly touch). Microsoft of course did not choose the character of "illness" or "ice". It still must be a little confusing for a Chinese user because he has to type "bing" on the address bar, while he sees another name on the page.