Talking Firefox security with Mozilla's Window Snyder

TalkBack 2 of 10:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

that comes from Windows' architecture

AppArmor uses the old UNIx paradigm of giving files rights according to the user that opens them. AppArmor does that more dynamically than straight users and groups management, but it remains based in POSIX land - where everything is a file.

Remember that Firefox is mainly programmed on POSIX machines...

Windows NT provides a more complex environment, where processes have different rights depending on the user that triggered an action; this allows the monolithic OS called Vista to have several users with different rights running the same application with different rights depending on who did what.

Protected mode is useful for Internet Explorer because, due to the way it sticks to the system (direct access to kernel, graphical APIs, its own APIs open to any system service etc.), IE is a widely opened door upon the OS - what Protected Mode tries to do is close as many doors as it can.

Firefox would still benefit from Protected mode, at least in its default install; if you unpacked a ZIP package containing Firefox files and ran it from a limited user account, where all services are blocked except access to public TCP/IP (no raw access) on the network stack, you'd have pretty much the same thing than Protected Mode.

Posted by: Mitch 74   Posted on: 08/07/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now
• Get top-ranked Novell support for Red Hat at 50% less Novell A simplified IT environment isn't just less complex, it's more reliable. ... Download Now