On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 01:28:04PM +0200, Marko Cupa�? wrote: > Hi, > > over last few years, I got an impression that OpenBSD project seem to > favour Chromium over Firefox. For example, in: > > https://www.openbsd.org/papers/BeckPledgeUnveilBSDCan2018.pdf > > "We know it's right when we can do chrome." > "[...]chrome - the stuff we use frequently" > > I don't understand neither browser's code. However, current propaganda > that reaches me goes along the lines "Firefox is made by non-profit > organization with users' freedom in mind, while Chromium is made by > for-profit organization for the purpose of extraction of users' > personal information". I trust OpenBSD project and it's users more than > big vendors' pitches, so I'd like to ask: > > Is the above untrue? Am I, as a user, more vulnerable to security and > privacy violations using Firefox than Chromium on OpenBSD? > > Or is this question off-topic, as OpenBSD cares about technical > correctness of the code in regard to overall security of a computer > system, not outcome of users voluntarily running technically correct > code, even when it compromises their personal security?
Chrome is a relative newcomer to browser land, and it was designed from the start from a security point of view, so it got a headstart there. The guys running the https part of google, even if we don't always agree with them, tend to try and make things more secure. Adam Langley's blog is fairly interesting. Niels Provos has done some nice work on the malware sites discovery part. It's been my understanding that firefox is finally catching up. Namely, they've put a reasonably secure architecture in place. And they are getting rid of their old large extension language to try and use the same architecture as chrome. The gap is much smaller than it was a year ago. In short, I feel that most of chrome's focus is on making things reasonably secure (as far as confidentiality and attacks go) so that people trust the browser, whereas firefox's focus is waaay more dispersed. Competition is good.
