Ask HN: Most Secure Browser? Chromium? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Most Secure Browser? Chromium?

2 pointsWorldDev7 comments

I am looking for the most secure browser for daily browsing. Excluding any other parameter like privacy or functionality.

Chrome : the privacy breaches seem to be large enough to actually become a security threat as well. Is that a fair statement?

Firefox : seemed pretty good to me until I read this article https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html. It claims that Firefox is more insecure than Chrome/Chromium, in large part because of a weaker sandboxing mechanism. Even if this mechanism seems to be catching up, this points to a significant lag in Firefox's security

Safari : is it secure?

Chromium : it seems to be the best bet to me, because it seems to contain the best security mechanisms, without the Google spyware. However: 1) it does not seem to provide an automatic update system 2) I read that it's unstable because it contains bleeding edge code. That actually sounds like it's less safe than chrome because of that => is there a way to know which Chromium version Chrome is using, and just using this version?

I am grateful for any thoughts.

There are currently 3 major browser engines: Google Chromium, Apple WebKit, and Mozilla Firefox. There are lots of derivatives of Chromium that claim to be secure and remove Google web service dependencies. WebKit is mostly iOS and macos which is pretty good in terms of security except for the Apple service dependencies. Firefox allows the most amount of user choice: Extensions like uBlock Origin and uMatrix, and ways to turn things off, except for the Firefox service dependencies.

I'd say the underlying technologies, which overlap in some cases, and have improved the security for the three browsers. We face a different threat in terms of reduced user choices: vendor lock-in, reduced privacy, and worsening user experience.

In the past and currently there is an option to block pop-ups, but this has been overcome with modern JavaScript. Even worse are browser vendor pop-ups nagging to give away personal information like location, credit cards, and other credentials -- and making this seem like this is normal and it's not a problem when clearly it is serious problem.

Chromium is the name of the project. Chrome is a specific release of Chromium that bakes in a few extra features. Neither are substantially different when it comes to tracking or release cadence. You can get Chrome nightly just as you can get Chromium nightly.

Chromium-based browsers have strong sandboxing, and a dedicated security team at Google. If security is your main priority that makes for a compelling argument. They have strong code guidelines such as their rule of two[1], make heavy use of fuzzers and others techniques.

You can read some of the other techniques they use for security here[2][3]:

Despite these techniques, they are using a language that is not memory-safe. Security bugs do occasionally pop up in Chromium. They're also patched very quickly, but the possibility exists of a 0-day impacting users.

Firefox has improved considerably in their sandboxing, but it is still a legacy codebase. Many techniques used to ensure code safety were not originally available, but have been slowly patched into the codebase.

Firefox has one advantage: it was the progenitor of Rust. They've had a head start in building components in a memory-safe language which offers them safety that Chromium does not currently have (Google are still considering adopting Rust). For this reason it's possible that Firefox will be able to avoid a memory bug that will affect Chromium-based browsers.

Both companies offer a generous bug bounty program. Firefox is occasionally targeted as it's used by TOR users, but Chromium receives far more scrutiny overall (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

I don't think either browser is a bad option, but neither are they perfect. I'd feel safer overall with Chrome (or Chromium, whatever) primarily due to the considerable resources Google is able to put into their security focus.

[1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/s...

[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRZr-HJcYmf2Y76D...

[3] https://security.googleblog.com/2021/09/an-update-on-memory-...

Thanks for your detailed answer. That makes sense. It feels like running Chromium might be a good trade-off : good security, less privacy risk.

However, I struggle to see how to run a stable version of Chromium. It seems the website only offers build on the most recent version, which is unstable. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I mentioned in my first comment that Chromium is the project, and Chrome is a specific (and official) build of Chromium. So you need to understand that Chromium is the codebase, and Chrome wraps up that code and distributes it (with minor changes) to the public.

Now you can still compile Chromium as-is at the trunk, without those small changes, but there's not an official binary as provided by Google for "pure Chromium". That needs to be compiled manually.

On Linux, you'd typically use your package manager to keep up to date with the latest builds of Chromium. If you're on Windows, again there's no official binaries but there are sites that auto-build the latest releases.

Nightly: https://download-chromium.appspot.com/

Stable: https://chromium.woolyss.com/

I'm guessing these do not include an auto-updater.

You should also understand that the difference between Chrome and Chromium is not just "tracking" (user metrics and crash reports). Chrome also includes content that could not legally be included in Chromium due to licensing, such as H.264 and AAC codec support. Those are pretty important to the web today.

I don't generally recommend running pure builds of Chromium except for developer use. You might consider an alternative like Ungoogled Chromium, though understand they focus more on privacy than security. You will lose features like auto-complete, browser sync, and Google's Safe Browsing service which warns of website malware. For this reason you'd actually be sacrificing security for privacy, which runs contrary to the goal you laid out above.

From all the information you've given, I do think a stable or beta branch of Chrome is your best option (though not Canary or dev branches, which are too recent).

Thanks again for your answer. I am familiar with the difference between Chrome and Chromium.

"that needs to be compiled manually" => I thought this contained chromium binaries : https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-sn...

"I do think a stable or beta branch of Chrome is your best option" => thanks for the advice. What are your thoughts on the privacy leaks of chrome affecting security? Is that a fair concern?

I also read somewhere that some time ago chrome was scanning the hard drive of the host. This seems fairly bad as well, if correct.

Privacy and security are often lumped together - usually correctly - but sometimes they are at odds. Security is based on knowing something and privacy is based on not knowing it. This is especially true when two parties are working in a system together (eg. you and me). The more you know about me, the better you can trust me, but the worse my privacy is.

I think the phrase "privacy leaks" is an overstatement, but data is collected based on various services that are enabled. You have the option to sign into Chrome to enable browser sync, but this means Google has information on your bookmarks. Is that a leak? Maybe the convenience justifies the sharing of data.

Auto-complete will start looking up search keywords as you type them into the omnibox. That means it's sending partial searches to Google just by typing in an address. It's sharing information to return a service.

Chrome collects other information on crash reports and usage statistics. See the category "Identifiers in Chrome" in their privacy policy for details on that. It's very human-accessible, as are most of Google's terms of service.

https://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/chrome/privacy/

It's user choice how deep you want to go into the privacy swimming pool. You're generally trading off convenience features in the shallow end, and security features in the deep end (eg. Ungoogle Chromium disabling Safe Browsing). Find the depth you're most comfortable at.

That all makes sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

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