Browser Isolation

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Lob

What could possibly go wrong?
Nov 7, 2020
161
44
After thinking about airgapping the browser some years ago and forgetting that idea (metaframe browsers are expensive), I built out a theory that everyone could use - for free: https://sc.ciso.pm/browserisolation

TL;DR: Isolating the browser you use day-to-day from the environment your data is in. It seems easy but of course for the security "have nots", they will continue to be vulnerable.....

Do you think it could be something to use? Productize?
 
That could help, but it relies on the OS to do the isolation, which may be likely to break at the same time as a browser escape. A single elevation of privilege vulnerability gets a mal-actor out to "System" level privileges, and from there nothing can really stop it. I think a better idea is to run a browser in a virtual machine, optionally with a checkpoint you can always restore back to. (Restoring back would eliminate any accumulated bookmarks and other things, but if you synced those out to the cloud it might work well enough.) Of course a VM is a heavier load on the system, and it will also have to be regularly maintained, which is a lot of extra workload for safety.
 
That could help, but it relies on the OS to do the isolation, which may be likely to break at the same time as a browser escape. A single elevation of privilege vulnerability gets a mal-actor out to "System" level privileges, and from there nothing can really stop it. I think a better idea is to run a browser in a virtual machine, optionally with a checkpoint you can always restore back to. (Restoring back would eliminate any accumulated bookmarks and other things, but if you synced those out to the cloud it might work well enough.) Of course a VM is a heavier load on the system, and it will also have to be regularly maintained, which is a lot of extra workload for safety.
I know what you're saying, you can counter as well if the box is patched and the users have no elevation rights then something persistent would be in the user realm (barring zero day flaws of course).

For free, I think it's better than nothing....