Improving web browser security

Posted by Chris Evans, Security Team

Malware is the source of a large number of reported security incidents on the Internet. Since Internet users can become infected in many different ways, the proliferation of malware is a very hard problem to solve. One part of the solution is to improve the robustness of web browsers such that security compromises due to browser bugs are minimized. We work hard to scrutinize our own code for potential vulnerabilities. We also contribute to research in this area with projects like the Browser Security Handbook and open source releases of the fuzzers involved in our software testing.

Some of you may have noticed that while working on Google Chrome, we have also discovered and responsibly reported a number of security issues in other browsers. Various scenarios lead us to report these bugs:

• Some browsers share code bases with Google Chrome, and we collaborate with those browser vendors.
• We develop generic fuzzers that are applicable to most browsers and that we want to share with others.
• We spend time analyzing behavior in different browsers, and we sometimes discover bugs in the process.
• It benefits our users and the Internet as a whole if we work collaboratively on better web browser security.

A few of the more interesting bugs we've researched recently include: this one in Opera uncovered by Michal Zalewski's fuzzer; a HTTP 449 response code issue in IE found by Tavis Ormandy; contributions to Safari 4's security by Robert Swiecki, SkyLined, and Dean McNamee (and others); an XMLHttpRequest leak in Firefox discovered by Marius Schilder; and a cross-domain leak in Chrome / Safari (the two share a common base) unearthed by Chris Evans.

The collaboration works both ways. We'd like to thank the following browser vendors:
Microsoft for helping with SSL interactions with HTTP proxies, Mozilla for sharing fuzzers, and Apple for sharing and coordinating Webkit-based bugs.

Together as a security community, our combined efforts to find vulnerabilities in browsers, practice responsible disclosure, and get problems fixed before criminals exploit them help make the Internet an overall safer place for everyone. We'd also like to thank all those who have helped us by contributing to Google Chrome.