Microsoft builds new browser
Microsoft Research is building a new browser that it is hoping will be more secure than existing browsers while at the same time being able to function as an operating system platform for future web-applications.
Called Gazelle, the browser is not the same as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 browser. Instead it is built on a 5 000-line C# browser kernel. This kernel is intended to enhance security for users by treating each part of a web site as a separate item. This includes elements such as frames and plug-ins. The reason for this is that each of these elements can potentially import malicious content from other sources.
Typically, browsers treat all the elements of a website as one element. Google’s Chrome browser, for example, isolates processes based on tabs so if one tab crashes it doesn’t affect the entire browsers. The Microsoft researchers argue that this isn’t enough. Instead they are trying to create a browser that even isolates content that is returned from the same domain name if it is in a different element. This allows for each element to be managed separately and check for integrity.
Increasingly, browser security violations – such as clickjacking which surfaced last year – insert code into portions of a trusted site and trick the user into following links to malicious sites. As web-based applications become more common and users move toward "cloud computing" web security becomes increasingly important.
The one downside of a tighter security model such as Gazelle’s, is that the browser takes longer to render pages. In fact, in its research paper the team details tests in which opening a new blank browser tab can take more than five times as long as on Internet Explorer 7. Opening a tab with a site loaded, however, took less than twice as long as IE7.
The Gazelle team says that some additional overhead is to be expected and will probably always be the case but it is confident that the latencies can be overcome with some additional tweaks.
Gazelle is still in prototype form and apart from the browser kernel, is built on existing IE components.
Microsoft Gazelle browser discussion
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