[whatwg] Dealing with UI redress vulnerabilities inherent to the current web

6) Admit that iframes and 3rd party embedded content are broken by 
design. Eliminate the iframe element completely, and set browsers to 
*never* load content or communicate with any site except the primary URL 
of the page. No 3rd party cookies, no 3rd party images, no 3rd party 
frames, no 3rd party scripts, no 3rd party nothing. Everything on the 
page comes from the same host. No exceptions.

Simple. Secure. Easy to understand. Easy to implement.

Cons: requires much rework of existing web apps that are designed around 
browser security flaws.

However, this security model is most definitely possible though without 
eliminating anything useful on the web today. This is exactly the 
security regime that Java applets have lived with for years. Third party 
content just requires an intermediate proxy server. Sadly, the designers 
of HTML and most browsers were not as paranoid as Sun was.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Refactoring HTML Just Published!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0321503635/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA

Received on Friday, 26 September 2008 08:21:06 UTC