What would a safe extension model look like to you?

At some point, you have to implicitly trust someone unless you audit every line of code (or write it yourself) and build everything from source that you run.

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bmacho 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> What would a safe extension model look like to you?

> At some point, you have to implicitly trust someone

A model so I trust my OS and my browser, and I don't have to trust anyone else, that is, they can't harm me.

	▲	bpt3 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You need open source extensions (they are now, as the source is included) and you need to personally audit them, or you need to find a browser with every single feature you want. Or do you want the browser to enforce permissions on extensions so you can lock them down as well as auditing them?

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raw_anon_1111 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a solved problem for at least ad blockers for over a decade on iOS. The ad blocking extension gives Safari a list of URLs and regex expressions to block

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blackcatsec 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, it's a solved problem for ad blockers, a very specific problem case that extensions have traditionally solved. But the entire concept of extensions is far greater than just "ad blockers", although that's the use case for which 99.9% of people have used them for.

But there are other uses cases, like cloud2butt.

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bpt3 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's solved if you trust Safari. I'm not sure that's the case for the parent poster.

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raw_anon_1111 4 hours ago | parent [-]

So you don’t “trust” Safari but you trust Firefox? In 25 years absolutely no one has accused Apple of storing your browsing data that’s not e2e encrypted (its stored so it can sync across devices).

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bpt3 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Did I say I trusted Firefox?

I'm not the person who wants to redesign the browser extension ecosystem, but I can build Firefox from scratch and review the source code if I want, unlike Safari.

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raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Right and you’re going to analyze every single line of code and verify it?

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bpt3 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What exactly is your issue?

Once again, I'm not the one who said they would like to design a new browser extension framework, but I have created custom versions of Firefox that have all ability to phone home removed and modified extension support. So not verifying every single line of code, but making fairly substantial changes in the direction the parent poster wanted to go in.

I'm interested in a conversation about that, not you pestering me about whatever issue I seem to have triggered within you that resulted in your interjections in this conversation.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That the geeks solution to “I don’t trust $companyX” is that “I am going to compile an alternate solution without looking at the source code”. Is kind of meaningless.