Re: What we're trying to protect...

Doesn't that ignore confidentiality requirements? (Although I like
the line of thinking.)

Brad Porter wrote:
> 
> In general, with the web, the goal of security is to transparently 
> protect the user.  Browsers that support sandboxing are trying to 
> transparently protect the user from malicious applications.   The only 
> two cases where the browser needs to make any assertions to the user are 
> the following:
> 
> 1) Establishing the veracity of the information on a site
> 2) Establishing that you are submitting your information to the party 
> you intended
> 
> I would argue that people are generally aware of the veracity of any 
> information on the web is questionable.  So the question becomes, are we 
> trying to make any statements about the veracity of information on a 
> site?  If not, then we can punt on #1 and focus instead on #2.
> 
> Number two only occurs when submitting information and is a very active 
> instead of passive act.  (I'm intentionally ignoring click-stream type 
> data leaks as they could be handled by proper sandbox restrictions.)  
> This suggests that for 98% of what people do, they don't need any 
> security indicators from the browser.  They only need to verity the 
> security when submitting their data.  This suggests that presentation of 
> security context information could be late-binding instead of 
> omnipresent and integrated into the task-flow instead of passive, which 
> might help address a number of the problems with the current mechanisms.
> 
> --Brad
> 
>

Received on Monday, 12 February 2007 16:30:45 UTC