The Evil Friend in Your Browser

By Achim D. Brucker and Michael Herzberg.

On the one hand, browser extensions, e.g., for Chrome, are very useful, as they extend web browsers with additional functionality (e.g., blocking ads). On the other hand, they are the most dangerous code that runs in your browsers: extension can read and modify both the content displayed in the browser. As they also can communicate with any web-site or web-service, they can report both data and metadata to external parties.

The current security model for browser extensions seems to be inadequate for expressing the security or privacy needs of browser users. Consequently, browser extensions are a "juice target" for attackers targeting web users.

We present results of analysing over 2500 browser extensions on how they use the current security model and discuss examples of extensions that are potentially of high risk. Based on the results of our analysis of real world browser extensions as well as our own threat model, we discuss the limitations of the current security model form a user perspective.

Please cite this work as follows:
A. D. Brucker and M. Herzberg, “The evil friend in your browser,” presented at the SteelCon conference, Sheffield, UK, Jul. 08, 2017. Author copy: http://logicalhacking.com/publications/talk-brucker.ea-steelcon-evil-friend-2017/

BibTeX
@Unpublished{ talk:brucker.ea:steelcon-evil-friend:2017,
  date       = {2017-07-08},
  title      = {The Evil Friend in Your Browser},
  author     = {Achim D. Brucker and Michael Herzberg},
  lecturer   = {Achim D. Brucker},
  venue      = {Sheffield, UK},
  eventtitle = {SteelCon conference},
  abstract   = {On the one hand, browser extensions, e.g., for Chrome, are
                very useful, as they extend web browsers with additional
                functionality (e.g., blocking ads). On the other hand, they
                are the most dangerous code that runs in your browsers:
                extension can read and modify both the content displayed in
                the browser. As they also can communicate with any web-site or
                web-service, they can report both data and metadata to
                external parties.
                
                The current security model for browser extensions seems to be
                inadequate for expressing the security or privacy needs of
                browser users. Consequently, browser extensions are a "juice
                target" for attackers targeting web users.
                
                We present results of analysing over 2500 browser extensions
                on how they use the current security model and discuss
                examples of extensions that are potentially of high risk.
                Based on the results of our analysis of real world browser
                extensions as well as our own threat model, we discuss the
                limitations of the current security model form a user
                perspective.},
  video      = {https://youtu.be/jh76dxG9gkI},
  areas      = {security, software},
  note       = {Author copy: \url{http://logicalhacking.com/publications/talk-brucker.ea-steelcon-evil-friend-2017/}},
}