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Chrome Throws Flash Into the Sandbox
wiredmikey writes "Google announced today that it will be extending Chrome's sandboxing technology to include the Flash Player plug-in. 'Sandboxing' technology is a method of isolating an application from the rest of the operating system and tightly controlling its resources. According to Google, the new sandboxing feature adds an additional layer of protection and will help protect users against malicious pages that attempt to hijack systems or steal information from the system."
that Chome was "as good as dead"?
That'll be helpful if it supports Flex-framework apps (which it should, given that they run in the flash player).
I've been developing a flex app for the Blackberry Playbook that's coming out in February; the ability to port it to the chrome store without much extra work would be handy.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
You have to run it on a completely different machine. Can't get much more secure than that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...we called this a "virtual machine".
It would depend on how much in resources is allocated to sandboxing. If this is a static number, then what if the flash is simply a flash banner ad and has resources allocated to it. Now, if the allocation is fully dynamic, this could be very awesome. They would still run into an inevitable problem of not enough resources on the machine, but then again, that is hard to avoid. I truly hope Google is not going to statically allocate resources since that would be bad. I have seriously made a logo for a person in the past using flash. If the resources are static for allocation, then there is a very High chance Google will either allocate too much or too little to something.
The world is how you make it
Google earns money through advertising and wants to serve Flash banners (As doubleclick, which is already owned by Google, does). All new security holes in Flash cause more people to block or at least hate it. By sandboxing Flash in Chrome, Google both encourages people to use its browser and lowers the motivation to block all flash content. A great decision for Google and it happens to benefit the users, too.
(As a freelancer who prefers Chrome as his browser, works mostly in internet advertising and occasionally teaches courses in web development related subjects - including Flash - I'd like to hug the engineers that implement this.)
In case you missed it, the Chromium Blog talked about this in their December 1st blog entry.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
After all, I already run Chrome itself in a sandbox. Firefox, too. Why?
Pretty much every exploit now begins by "the user visits a website". After that, pretty much any technology can be the hole it exploits - Java, Flash, PDF viewing, even JPEG rendering has been exploited. There's an abundance of targets. The modern browser is just too big a platform to secure completely. So, I don't trust any browser more modern than Lynx.
Original Slashdot story from December 3rd.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Can the sandboxing be done in such a way that all the data written by FlashPlayer in local storage can be erased when it goes out of scope? Every invocation of flash player will be on a freshly cleared local storage and one flash run will not be able to retrieve cookies and other persistent data?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is most likely in response to their poor score in the NSS Labs report. Maybe their score will improve from 3%?
Er, no. That report evaluated performance against "socially engineered malware" only. In short, it tested how well the browser handled protecting the user from being careless or gullible.
Chrome's sandboxing is intended to limit the damage if an attack is encountered, not to keep the attack from happening by warning you that a given site hosts malware.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
Throw it into the trashcan.
Heck, I think Firefox did it already... I think Flash must have released an unstable version recently. I’ve had Firefox lock up on me a couple of times. Killing the “plugin container” process in Task Manager immediately made Firefox start responding again and display an info bar on pages that had been using Flash saying that a plugin had crashed (gee, wonder why?) and suggesting that I reload the page.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
would be to sandbox everything made by Adobe.
Litter box, sandbox; both are full of sand and "Tootsie Rolls".
No. This was actually announced 2 weeks ago by Google and Adobe, not today. http://blog.chromium.org/2010/12/rolling-out-sandbox-for-adobe-flash.html
If you browse in incognito mode does it then make all flash storage non-persistent? Because this is how the evercookie works across incognito.
I run my sandbox in a sandbox. That ought to be safe enough!
As an admitted fan of the iOS line, that was comedy gold. Here's hoping the butthurt fanbois don't have mod points today.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
... a long time ago. I'm not impressed.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
I've been thinking that the ultimate in browser security would be to use the Chrome "OS" to create a virtual machine for the browser, thus each "browser" would actually be it's own machine (VM). The only way for the browser to get files to the host machine would be through some sort of quarenteen folder or frtp like protocol. You'd have to install plug-ins in each VM but if something bad happened all you 'd have to do is start again. Bookmarks can be sync'd over the web.
Here's proof. CPU usage reduction up to tenfold
To be even more specific, the test evaluated the signature bases against a set of undisclosed URLs. And to note an odd quirk, the test heavily penalized all other browsers for pushing out signatures for these particular URLs a few hours after IE received its signatures. So, the reality could be that NSS biased their test schedule to coincide the IE signature updates, or they took their URL list from the same source as IE, or something else entirely. So, without actually disclosing their full source data and methodology, we simply have no objective way of concluding anything from that report.
Since a sandbox is a literbox and a litterbox is really just a toilet. That would mean they're throwing flash in the toilet. Perfect!
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I think this is a good step forward. I'd like to see the majority of plugins in a sandbox. I like to use them, but you can't always be 100% sure if you can trust them or not. Sure, there are applications that have been around for ages, are designed by good companies that have decent reputations - but what about that "must have app" that you're not completely sure about? I know on my Blackberry, each application has its own permissions. I can add and remove permissions at will, and even set them to prompt me. I've always found Internet Explorer a bit scary, but have never worried much about Firefox. With some plugins, it should be a no brainer: does a weather application need access to my hard drive, aside from a caching space? I don't think so. Possibly plugins could be vetted and reviewed by a committee, and given permissions within the browser/OS based on what they need to do, and each plugin would have a "safety rating" (red, yellow, green) so you can choose your exposure. If all of your plugins were "green," you'd know that the committee reviewed the code and set the permissions in such a way that your data could not be compromised. If code could not be reviewed, it would automatically be marked yellow or red. I like the idea of choice as equally well as I like safety and security.
He throws Flash in the litterbox.
The day they announced the Chrome browser they said they would work with Adobe toward this goal.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Plus, Chrome supported semi-working sandboxed Flash for like 6 months, via --safe-plugins.
They didn't already do this?
It's the user who's in the sandbox with Google software. No chance of turning off the fade-in, or the instant search keylogger.
Something tells me the "we need monies!" department will trow a wrench in to the machinery.
The tracking cookies will not be blocked and thus there will be a way to "escape" the sandbox. Google is an advertisement company you know.
Disclaimer: I am a Google user. I am simply aware of their revenue stream.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.