SecBrowser: A Security-hardened, Non-anonymous Browser - DEPRECATED

1 Like

We might want to set network.IDN_show_punycode to true by default to fix very hard to notice Phishing Scam - Firefox / Tor Browser URL not showing real Domain Name - Homograph attack (Punycode). Waiting to see if any arguments come up against that in near future.

1 Like

That’s kinda leading into modifying Tor.

It’d probably be best to wait until the Tor Project enables it.

1 Like

Applies to Tor Browser. Offtopic here.

Does not apply to SecBrowser. There we have full flexibility to optimize for clearnet, security, non-Whonix.

2 Likes
1 Like

For history purposes, it’s archived.

Redirecting SecBrowser™ has been deprecated! to SecBrowser™ has been deprecated! since that page pops up in google results, is outdated and could be confusing. Wiki history is still there in case you like to archive something extra.

Yay! SecBrowser ™ has been deprecated! was recently updated by anonymous (have my theories who that was, though :)). Motivated me to add some updates on top. All recent changes:

SecBrowser/Windows: Difference between revisions - Whonix

1 Like

Without any customization, SecBrowser ™ default configuration offers better security than Firefox, Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

This isn’t true. Chrome has far better security than Firefox due to having a much stronger sandbox [1], strict site isolation [2], hardened memory allocator [3], control flow integrity [4] etc. SecBrowser can’t add any of this.

Just look at what experts like Daniel Micay [5] or thegrugq [6] say. Also see this (although dated) study http://files.accuvant.com/web/files/AccuvantBrowserSecCompar_FINAL.pdf

In no way am I recommending chrome though (since it’s spyware), but we should at least stay factual.

[1]: Chromium Docs - Sandbox
[2]: Site Isolation
[3]: PartitionAlloc Design
[4]: Control Flow Integrity
[5]: Usage guide | GrapheneOS
[6]: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef5164845908

2 Likes

Your sources are outdated. Modern Firefox has significantly improved it’s security.

1 Like

No they are not. Firefox doesn’t have site isolation yet as that’s to come in project fission Project Fission - MozillaWiki

Firefox does not have a hardened memory allocator as it uses a fork of jemalloc, a performance-oriented malloc, not security unlike chrome’s PartitionAlloc mozjemalloc.cpp - mozsearch

Firefox does not support CFI and there’s no progress at all on that.

Daniel Micay and thegrugq also regularly say those things.

They aren’t outdated.

Unless you know more than mozilla, security experts and even the firefox source code…

It has. Still not close to chrome though.

2 Likes

Without any customization, SecBrowser ™ default configuration offers better security than Firefox, Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

SecBrowser is a side project. I won’t have time to stay up to date on these comparsions. Therefore removed text “Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge”.

2 Likes
1 Like

This tor-talk thread mentions SecBrowser, but makes a fair point - for clearnet browsing, wouldn’t using the ghacks user.js file with standard Firefox provide better, finer-grained security?

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2020-July/045615.html

It is updated often with many, many changes to about:config - probably a lot better than just Tor Browser without Tor (which is really just Firefox private browsing mode without Tor?)

See:

PS I think the main documentation page is all looking pretty good now except for outstanding tidy up to do here:

  1. Non-Qubes-Whonix Only section
  2. The specific Tunnel chaining config pages (various permutations)
  3. Random pages in the Appendix section

Probably a few months work here and there at part-time, $0/hr rates :wink:

2 Likes

IMO not really, because most of the enhancements are patched into the TBB codebase and not merely some toggled prefs. I know there is the uplifting project, but ultimately not everything will be included in FF and the latest stuff will not be right away.

ghacks is interesting to document for those who can;t use SecBrowser for some reason.

2 Likes

https://gitlab.com/whonix/tb-starter/-/commit/8835a74a26a7fbada03d541359f51bf3ab1796db

1 Like

SecBrowser ™ has been DEPRECATED!

1 Like

add with bold text deprecated on first post.

1 Like

Tor Project is resurrecting SecBrowser as Base Browser - Development - Kicksecure Forums

1 Like