Mozilla is finally adding a worthwhile feature to Firefox

[mikeymikec]

https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/...e-ever-featuring-electrolysis-in-v48#comments

Security and performance enhancements by sandboxing through multiple processes.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Definitely looking forward to this. And after this long I certainly hope it's stable right when it comes out!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nice!

 

[Charmonium]

About time. Now maybe I won't get 20 second lags once FF is using 3 gig of memory.

 

[JimmiG]

Finally managed to get it enabled on my system after a bit of frustration and nonsense.

First I set browser.tabs.remote.autostart to True

But then e10s was disabled because of add-ons, so I set extensions.e10sBlockedByAddons to False

Then it wouldn't enable because of "Accessibility tools". I don't use any accessibility tools.
I found in the Settings that the option to "show an on-screen keyboard when necessary" was enabled so I turned that off.
Still no e10s.

So I set browser.tabs.remote.autostart.disabled-because-using-a11y to False.
Still no e10s.

So I set accessibility.force_disabled to True.
Still no e10s.

Finally, after yet more Googling, I set accessibility.lastLoadDate to 0
Finally!

Apparently, if you intentionally or by accident, at some point in time, turned on accessibility, it bombs out.

 

[nemesismk2]

very nice because everyone likes security and performance enhancements by sandboxing

 

[TheRyuu]

I'll believe it when I see it. Mozilla seems to really enjoy having a lack of interest in anything relating to (defense in depth) security. You could also say they seem to lack any focus at all on what they want to do with their browser but maybe I'm just not seeing the bigger picture.

Disclaimer: I use/follow Chrome.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I am a Firefox user and I must say I agree with you on this one.
They are all over the place when they used to focus on fewer things. I hope this is the beginning of a renewed security focus, because they have lost a lot of market share in the last few years!

I'll believe it when I see it. Mozilla seems to really enjoy having a lack of interest in anything relating to (defense in depth) security. You could also say they seem to lack any focus at all on what they want to do with their browser but maybe I'm just not seeing the bigger picture.

Disclaimer: I use/follow Chrome.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Finally managed to get it enabled on my system after a bit of frustration and nonsense.

First I set browser.tabs.remote.autostart to True

But then e10s was disabled because of add-ons, so I set extensions.e10sBlockedByAddons to False

Then it wouldn't enable because of "Accessibility tools". I don't use any accessibility tools.
I found in the Settings that the option to "show an on-screen keyboard when necessary" was enabled so I turned that off.
Still no e10s.

So I set browser.tabs.remote.autostart.disabled-because-using-a11y to False.
Still no e10s.

So I set accessibility.force_disabled to True.
Still no e10s.

Finally, after yet more Googling, I set accessibility.lastLoadDate to 0
Finally!

Apparently, if you intentionally or by accident, at some point in time, turned on accessibility, it bombs out.

Adding this is what finally did it for me after similar frustration:
'browser.tabs.remote.force-enable' set to true
But it breaks my extension that makes dragging a link open in a new tab, which is largely the reason I'm still even using Firefox.

 

[John Connor]

Pffft. Sandboxie or VooDoo Shield. I already beat them years ago!

 

[TeknoBug]

Been testing it out, seems to have improved on performance, I may go back to Firefox from Opera especially since a CHinese firm has picked up Opera which makes me feel iffy.

 

[TheRyuu]

Pffft. Sandboxie or VooDoo Shield. I already beat them years ago!

Please note that Sandboxie may not offer the same level of protection as something like the Google Chrome sandbox implementation[1]. The article is a little old and some improvements may have been made to Sandboxie in the mean time but I still don't believe it offers the same level of protection.

[1] https://labs.bromium.com/2013/07/23/application-sandboxes-a-pen-testers-perspective/

 

[ninaholic37]

something about OS sandbox and Single-core CPU

 

[John Connor]

Please note that Sandboxie may not offer the same level of protection as something like the Google Chrome sandbox implementation[1]. The article is a little old and some improvements may have been made to Sandboxie in the mean time but I still don't believe it offers the same level of protection.

[1] https://labs.bromium.com/2013/07/23/application-sandboxes-a-pen-testers-perspective/

There's been a few members here mention Sandboxie stopped ransomware from getting on their computer.

I use both Sandboxie and VooDoo Shield.

 

[Carfax83]

So Mozilla finally decided to modernize their browser. I can't see why anyone would want to use such an archaic browser in the first place.

They've been lagging behind Chrome, and even Internet Explorer for years now when it comes to performance and security.

 

[nemesismk2]

So Mozilla finally decided to modernize their browser. I can't see why anyone would want to use such an archaic browser in the first place.

They've been lagging behind Chrome, and even Internet Explorer for years now when it comes to performance and security.

yes firefox has not been as fast as chrome but it has always been much faster than internet explorer.

 

[TheRyuu]

So Mozilla finally decided to modernize their browser. I can't see why anyone would want to use such an archaic browser in the first place.

They've been lagging behind Chrome, and even Internet Explorer for years now when it comes to performance and security.

yes firefox has not been as fast as chrome but it has always been much faster than internet explorer.

Well if not IE then Edge might be a more fair comparison when it comes to the "modern browser". I realize that it's lacking extensions outside of the fast track channels but there are certain areas where Edge is faster than everything else (e.g. GPU acceleration, certain javascript performance).

Security is something else entirely IMO and I'm not sure you can really compare Firefox to other browsers since it completely lacks any defense in depth.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

But after this update, we would be able to compare it to other browsers right? I know that it doesn't work exactly like chrome but I believe it does separate plugins into another process and maybe other objects too?

Anyone know if Vivaldi separates processes?

Well if not IE then Edge might be a more fair comparison when it comes to the "modern browser". I realize that it's lacking extensions outside of the fast track channels but there are certain areas where Edge is faster than everything else (e.g. GPU acceleration, certain javascript performance).

Security is something else entirely IMO and I'm not sure you can really compare Firefox to other browsers since it completely lacks any defense in depth.

 

[coffeemonster]

So Mozilla finally decided to modernize their browser. I can't see why anyone would want to use such an archaic browser in the first place.

I can't imagine being stuck with chrome as a primary browser. *shudders*

They've been lagging behind Chrome, and even Internet Explorer for years now when it comes to performance and security.

in what? synthetic benchmarks where the difference is a few % maybe? Using the 2 back to back(which I do daily) there is either no perceivable difference or Firefox is the one that feels faster.

 

[TheRyuu]

But after this update, we would be able to compare it to other browsers right? I know that it doesn't work exactly like chrome but I believe it does separate plugins into another process and maybe other objects too?

Anyone know if Vivaldi separates processes?

Right now (you can even activate it in Firefox 47 if you switch some knobs in about:config) all its doing is separating out the rendering into another process. Currently this is being done for both performance (e.g. interactive experience with the browser should now be faster) and stability (if something crashes the whole browser doesn't crash now). There's really very little security benefit, at least right now. I believe they have plans to slowly roll out additional features which make using of e10s such as sandboxing and using more processes (process per tab and what have you).

Plugins have always been "isolated" in the plugin-container extension but again there is no sandbox on it. All Firefox processes still run at the medium integrity level and have no sandboxing or additional defense in depth outside of the standard Windows protections like ASLR and DEP.

in what? synthetic benchmarks where the difference is a few % maybe? Using the 2 back to back(which I do daily) there is either no perceivable difference or Firefox is the one that feels faster.

Lets be honest, there really isn't a major difference in real world performance between the major browsers. All of them are essentially "fast enough" for most needs. There can be perceivable differences with interactivity due to differences in hardware acceleration but this has little to do with the javascript performance.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Thanks for the response. So do you think that plugins will be sandboxed in the future?

Right now (you can even activate it in Firefox 47 if you switch some knobs in about:config) all its doing is separating out the rendering into another process. Currently this is being done for both performance (e.g. interactive experience with the browser should now be faster) and stability (if something crashes the whole browser doesn't crash now). There's really very little security benefit, at least right now. I believe they have plans to slowly roll out additional features which make using of e10s such as sandboxing and using more processes (process per tab and what have you).

Plugins have always been "isolated" in the plugin-container extension but again there is no sandbox on it. All Firefox processes still run at the medium integrity level and have no sandboxing or additional defense in depth outside of the standard Windows protections like ASLR and DEP.



Lets be honest, there really isn't a major difference in real world performance between the major browsers. All of them are essentially "fast enough" for most needs. There can be perceivable differences with interactivity due to differences in hardware acceleration but this has little to do with the javascript performance.

 

[Zodiark1593]

So Mozilla finally decided to modernize their browser. I can't see why anyone would want to use such an archaic browser in the first place.

They've been lagging behind Chrome, and even Internet Explorer for years now when it comes to performance and security.

As far as extensions go, Firefox appears to be the most versatile of the browsers, however, it seems to be giving up a lot in the way of security to maintain compatibility with most extensions, otherwise we'd have a sandboxed Firefox long ago.

One option could be a complete rewrite of the browser and just tell heavy extension users "too bad." though it's an unlikely route.

 

[RockNRule]

I must live a charmed life. I browse far and wide for decades, use FF almost exclusively with a few popular plugins , and have never been infected with anything.

The way ya'll talk, you have to reload your op sys 52 times a year after the weekly infection.

 

[coffeemonster]

I must live a charmed life. I browse far and wide for decades, use FF almost exclusively with a few popular plugins , and have never been infected with anything.

The way ya'll talk, you have to reload your op sys 52 times a year after the weekly infection.

same here, and I dont even use an active virus scanner.

 

[TheRyuu]

Thanks for the response. So do you think that plugins will be sandboxed in the future?

Well like I said in my first post in this thread I'll believe it when I see it. However with that said I do believe they have that as one of their goals with the new e10s model although I'm not sure they've specified plugins exactly (and plugins are very much different from all the other stuff they're doing with e10s I suppose). I do know they've said they plan to slowly roll out sandboxing and isolation of extensions/tabs with it coming in phases (i.e. first isolation, then sandboxing).

For 32-bit Firefox Flash is already isolated with a Chrome like sandbox (it does actually use Chrome's sandbox AFAIK) running at a low integrity level among other restrictions (it's not as restrictive as using Flash in Chrome though).

This does actually bring up a good question though. Plugins are very much different from tabs, web pages and extensions since they're not being ran with the browsers javascript interpreter/JIT. Will Firefox drop NPAPI support and move to the Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI)[1][2] that's currently used in Chrome and other Blink based browsers (e.g. Opera)? The PPAPI was designed to be ran in a separate process from the browser so it lends itself to sandboxing/isolation. All of the major plugins on Chrome use the out-of-process model for this and other reasons.

I suppose there are some issues with attempting to implement the PPAPI on Firefox since AFAIK it was designed with Blink in mind. I'm not even sure if a formal specification was ever published outside of the source code in Chromium/Blink as the PPAPI Wiki section mentions[1]. It'll be interesting to see what Adobe does with Flash in the future and if they ever completely drop support for the NPAPI architecture. Google also has the added advantage of having access to the Adobe Flash source code although this has increased security on all browsers across operating systems and not just Chrome[3][4].

It'll be interesting to see who blinks (no pun intended) first, Firefox caving in to implement it or Adobe forcing their hand to provide some alternative (or maybe none at all). Sure you can live without Flash for a lot of things but there are still sites which are reliant on it so could Firefox get away with simply dropping all NPAPI support without a valid alternative? I know they already plan to drop NPAPI plugin support save for Flash but is that just the beginning?

tl;dr I think Firefox has to have a new plugin model before we're going to see isolated/sandboxed plugins, possibly implementing the Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI) that Chrome and other Blink based browsers currently use.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client#Pepper
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI#PPAPI
[3] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/07/significant-flash-exploit-mitigations_16.html (just one example)
[4] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2016/03/life-after-isolated-heap.html