9/14/2009
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University of Illinois computer science professor Sam King was recently profiled by IEEE Spectrum. The article focused on King's work to build a new Opus Palladianum, or OP, browser. OP is a radically redesigned Web browser intended to address the many security vulnerabilities of current web browswers. King and other researchers in his lab, including PhD students Chris Grier and Shuo Tang, are borrowing concepts typically seen in operating systems to enable the OP browser to securely manage web applications and data access.
From the article:
"From a security perspective, browsers are completely broken," King says. The problem with traditional browsers is that the way people use the Web has changed. Instead of just looking up information on static pages coded with HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, people are using the browser to run Web versions of applications that used to reside on a PC, such as e-mail, social networking, and online banking. "I don't think my mother uses anything besides her Web browser," King says.
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But browsers weren't built to manage access to applications and sensitive data. And their vulnerability to digital attacks is increasingly attracting everyone from run-of-the-mill mischief makers to sophisticated criminal organizations. Researchers at Sophos, a security company based in Abingdon, England, near Oxford, say they are discovering sabotaged sites every 3.6 seconds, quadruple last year's rate.
King and two of his students began working on OP two years ago with the idea that if they divided a browser into separate subsystems—for instance, the user interface, storage, and networking—they could make it more secure. Communication between the different parts of the program is kept simple and explicit, much as processes are managed in an operating system.”
Read more at: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/newbreed-browsers-are-harder-to-hack