What we're trying to protect...

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 16:27:10 UTC