[HN Gopher] "Web Environment Integrity": Locking Down the Web
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"Web Environment Integrity": Locking Down the Web
Author : edsimpson
Score : 146 points
Date : 2023-08-01 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| skilled wrote:
| Hard to listen to anything from a company that constantly:
|
| 1) Doesn't innovate on anything, social media accounts are
| plagued with pointing fingers at others while using a Chromium
| fork themselves, ignorance at its finest.
|
| 2) Has been accused of selling copyrighted data for AI training
| and has not made a public statement.
|
| 3) Has a history of making stupid decisions and only apologizing
| when a big news outlet calls them out.
| franczesko wrote:
| Seems like a biased opinion. Brave and their products innovate
| a LOT. Browser, (good) search engine, crypto as a way to keep
| websites profitable, etc.
| kavaruka wrote:
| do you remember when they put (silently) their referral code
| in crypto exchange websites?
|
| lol, what a great innovation!
| speedgoose wrote:
| I'm not sure their crypto had the objective to keep websites
| profitable. It looks more like a good hack to get rich by
| obtaining classic money with the sell of random numbers. But
| I'm not an expert in scams.
| skilled wrote:
| [flagged]
| MildRant wrote:
| This might be the most "Hacker News" comment I've ever
| read. Whether or not I agree with the way Brave goes about
| their business, I'm not going to deny they are trying new
| things which is the definition of innovation.
| skilled wrote:
| Well, neither of the things I mentioned are hard to look
| up. I even worded them specifically to make it easier to
| instantly find a source, I just happen to be away from my
| PC right now or I would have linked the sources myself.
|
| I have not seen any innovation from them so far, sorry to
| say. They are using a pre-existing browser engine, they
| are lawyered up and don't respond to public callouts, and
| they have a history of doing dumb shit that had their CEO
| cave and apologise for a "mistake".
|
| If this is opinion then I think you need to look up what
| that word really means...
| dang wrote:
| Please don't reply by breaking the site guidelines
| yourself. That only makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Please don't reply by breaking the site guidelines
| yourself. That only makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| happytiger wrote:
| The faster we can build usable decentralized apps and get users
| onto them, the better.
|
| It should only lend urgency to leave the "old web" for those of
| us who are builders, makers and evangelizers.
|
| They're after encryption, they're attacking anonymity, they want
| all of finance for themselves, and they want to kill privacy too
| -- I for one say NO thank you.
|
| There is a level -- almost a treble --- in these comments on how
| "it's inevitable" or "already cooked" but only if you see these
| fights in isolation. It most assuredly it is _not_ inevitable.
|
| Let's get positively focused and make hay while the sun shines
| and it's not too late. There's so much intelligence, compassion
| and love for humanity in this community. Let's use it.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I personally think the upsides of WebBundles are huge. There's
| nothing that would stop the browser from being able to filter &
| ignore content coming from in a WebBundle, so I'm not sure what
| Brave's greivance is here. The adserving topic is complicated as
| heck, but everyone seems to acknowledge big change is necessary &
| Google and Firefox both have proposals to radically overhaul the
| system while enhancing user privacy; Brave's own primary
| distinguisher at this point is their BAT tokens, their own answer
| here. There's complicated topics here, but I see Brave following
| the standard pattern of trying to be a lightning rod of
| discontent.
|
| It's also surprising to me how almost no one has commented on
| Private Access Tokens shipping for Apple. Which do the same
| thing. Here's them bragging about being able to avoid catchpa's
| since the devices are all vouched for by Apple as unmodified &
| controlled by Apple:
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10077/
|
| There was a decent submission on this recently, but not much
| engagement. https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2023-07-25-web-
| integri... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36866355
|
| I think this is absolutely the worst shit, almost as bad as MV3
| being a utterly neutered shitty hell hole version of what web
| extensions were. But it's notable to me that both Google didn't
| start this particular trend, Apple did, and more broadly - I have
| such a hard time picking words here - it feels like the stark
| polemics have been on overdrive to create a reality distortion
| field, where Chrome is purely bad/evil/awful/no-good everywhere.
| We should be upset & mad! But I feel like we're pretty far into
| losing our minds territory, and slipping into strokes of
| broadsweeping public madness.
| sircastor wrote:
| I don't mean to be an apologist here, but Google's vs Apple's
| intention seem crystal clear.
|
| Google is trying to make it impossible not to see the ads it's
| selling. Apple's intent seems to be lock down the Apple
| platform...? I know Apple is blatantly abusive in lots of
| spaces, but Chrome is a super-majority of the browsers in use.
| It's an odd take to spin this into "they started it" finger
| pointing.
|
| The reason Chrome is getting all the hate is that Google
| finally realized its power, position, and needs and became
| self-serving. Apple is just a lesser demigod is this fight.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| The stated goal of both is the same: to provide a privacy-
| preserving primitive for anti-abuse. Both explicitly state
| that the goal is not to exclude competing browsers or
| operating systems or to limit things like browser features or
| extensions.
|
| You're just assuming that they're both lying about the
| motives, and making up the worst possible motives you can
| think of for each. I think in both cases you're wrong, and
| the stated goal is the actual goal. (Apple is not looking to
| lock down their platform with this, and Google is not
| thinking about ad blockers at all here.)
|
| Their reasons for needing such an anti-abuse primitive are
| not the same, but the mechanisms are very similar, and the
| range of attestations they could provide without public
| opinion or regulatory backlash is probably almost identical.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I don't pay enough attention to comment on Apple, but of
| _course_ I assume Google is lying; they 're an adtech
| company trying to ship something that would make it trivial
| to break all adblockers. Why would you ever trust them?
| jsnell wrote:
| Because it is functionality they really need for other
| (legit!) reasons, and since trying to turn it into an
| anti-adblock technology would be a PR and regulatory
| nightmare, and make it harder to ship for the uses they
| actually need it for.
|
| Lying tends to be stupid, especially for a company under
| so much scrutiny.
| [deleted]
| ryukafalz wrote:
| If you're pointing a gun at me, I don't care if you say
| it's your intention not to shoot.
|
| Whether it's their goal or not to exclude competing/upstart
| browsers and operating systems, that will be the end result
| given the content of the proposed standard.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Google is not thinking about ad blockers at all here._
|
| The first example in the WEI doc is enforcing that ads are
| viewed by humans: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-
| Environment-Integrity/...
| jsnell wrote:
| Sure, and that text has nothing to do with preventing the
| blocking of ads. It is not saying "humans shall be forced
| to watch ads", like you're implying. It is saying that
| bot clicks/views to ads should not count. (It is also
| saying that websites want proof of probable humanity,
| usually via captchas, and we should have better ways of
| doing that. But that aspect of the bullet point isn't
| really specific to ads in any way.)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I was trying to paint a broader picture of how we view
| Google. I think in many cases there is a lot more complexity,
| and in most cases, we don't see or appreciate a lot of good
| things that do help us all. blink-dev is generally a pretty
| great mailing list of good things, in my view.
|
| This comment is a return to what kind of disturbs me, of
| using a very narrow focus on one specific thing: one specific
| thing I already said is the very worst shit.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm sure Tom Scott wouldn't mind better personal attestation
| options on the Web: https://www.yahoo.com/now/prominent-youtuber-
| claims-brave-ba...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Interesting, I'm a fan of Tom's and agree with this take but
| have not known about it before now!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What is Brave going to do when the code for WEI becomes load
| bearing in the chromium code base?
|
| Still excuse after excuse after excuse to just not use Firefox. I
| literally don't care if you have to hold up your nose, there's
| only one actual alternative browser engine, and it's a matter of
| survival for anyone who doesn't want the whole internet
| controlled by google.
|
| It could be half as fast (it isn't) and use twice as much RAM (it
| doesn't) and ask for a damn nude photo of me and I'd still be
| using it right now.
|
| Using a google owned browser engine is like growing cavendish
| bananas while you know the neighbor's farm has the blight
| already. Change over and try to get good at the new strain while
| you have a choice, because soon you won't and it will be out of
| your hands what happens after that.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Honestly modern Firefox works better than Chrome for me at
| everything - better memory management - faster loading times -
| better extension support.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| There is only one set of site where Chrome performs better
| than Firefox: sites made by Google. I can't help but assume
| that it's intentional.
|
| Unfortunately, for many people those are very important
| sites.
|
| The Internet desperately needs some government to step in and
| force Google to spin off Chrome as an independent company.
| It's the only hope we have of stopping Google from completely
| ruining the Internet.
| sedatk wrote:
| Firefox is great but I can't make it my daily driver because
| of two issues:
|
| - Terrible font kerning on canvas (Google Docs, Spreadsheets)
| (probably a decade old bug)
|
| - Doesn't sync icons in favorites bar (which I use without
| accompanying text, so, big deal)
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| On Linux the one area where I feel (nothing scientific) that
| Chrome is faster is for JavaScript code execution. But I
| still use Firefox instead of Chrome.
| ziftface wrote:
| I used to feel that too but not anymore. Now when I boot up
| chrome to test something I don't notice a difference. I
| think it's improved quite a bit over the last few years.
| cmgriffing wrote:
| Brave is not just a wrapper on top of Chromium. It is actually
| using a forked version of Chromium. So, it might not be that
| big of a concern.
| lostmsu wrote:
| One doesn't really preclude another in practice.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Firefox is legitimately not an option for me. It's literally
| unusably slow. So slow that it's not actually better than no
| browser at all.
| pjerem wrote:
| You have an issue. Firefox is not slow by any means. I use
| all the browsers for work and Firefox for my navigation.
| Firefox have never been slower than anything else.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Clearly, I do, yes! But I've given up on trying to nail
| down what the issue actually is after about a year of
| trying. It exists on all of my machines, so it's likely
| related to some other piece of software I commonly use. I
| just don't know which one.
|
| I am not asserting that FF is bad and nobody should use it.
| I'm asserting that there are some people (at least one,
| anyway) who _can 't_ use it. Shaming people for not using
| FF is, therefore, uncalled for.
| pkulak wrote:
| The excuse is always that Gecko is harder to integrate... but
| at what point is maintaining all these patches harder?
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| I've been maintaining a "soft" fork now for about 12 years
| now, most of that time on my own. It's actually possible to
| get quite involved and do some cool stuff with the changes
| you make, while keeping up to date; with the resources the
| size of a company like Brave have, it'd be incredibly
| straightforward to actually use your own browser logic, with
| a bit of good engineering. (To all intents and purposes,
| using Gecko as the engine and your own browser features on
| top of that, separate to Firefox itself).
|
| I've started myself in the past, and am picking that back up
| again. But by all means it's quite possible.
| Spivak wrote:
| It won't matter, if WEI catches on Firefox will be in the same
| boat. Any non-WEI browser is equal in terms of protesting it.
| The threat is sites will lose their users if they start
| requiring it. If anything Chrome derivatives that patch it out
| but still pretend to be Chrome are even worse for website
| operators that want to use it.
|
| There's lots of reasons to use FF, this isn't one of them.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Firefox on iOS is awful. Basic features like swiping the
| toolbar to switch tabs are still missing.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Firefox on iOS is not Firefox.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Nor is chrome or brave, yet Firefox is the only one with
| such a poor experience.
| super256 wrote:
| The engine is not, but the UI still sucks. I read on HN
| that Mozilla started working on a new iOS browser, since we
| all expect Apple to open up iOS in this or next year to
| custom browser engines. I hope they will make this new
| Firefox for iOS a reason to never touch Safari again (I
| miss Firefox Sync + Firefox add-ons so much!!)
| franczesko wrote:
| Firefox needs to win mobile. In my opinion this is where Brave
| excels.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Mozilla is a political organization, not a web browser
| developer. I'll keep using brave.
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| If Mozilla is a "politcal organization," their whole politics
| is centered on how to shape the web. And, idk, having a
| strong position on such ideas seems pretty damn relevant to
| this conversation.
|
| Using "political" like a slur is childish and naive.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| Really? Mozilla is a political organisation and Brave, the
| very same organisation that hires a fired Mozilla CEO that
| publicly opposes same-sex marriage, is not a political
| organisation?
|
| Cool.
| postalrat wrote:
| Brave is a cryptocurrency. No thanks.
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| I don't see that at all. I've been using Brave for years
| and nothing to do with crypto. There is a BAT thing, but
| you can disable it.
| postalrat wrote:
| The BAT thing is the cryptocurrency. No thanks.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > It could be half as fast (it isn't) and use twice as much RAM
| (it doesn't) and ask for a damn nude photo of me and I'd still
| be using it right now.
|
| Same. I mostly use Firefox (I still use Chrome for testing) and
| it's a good browser in itself: not just because it's not
| Chrome/Edge.
| fsniper wrote:
| Exactly. To have a fighting chance to not loose your control
| over your hardware and software choices, you need to do
| compromises. (Which we are already loosing on many fronts.)
|
| I see people complaining Firefox having subpar font rendering,
| in sufficient tab management, Mozilla not acting up to their
| standards, but lack on some fronts.
|
| So what? You won't make compromises on some of your convenience
| and still use a user hostile company's software, or forks of it
| which strongholds you to their whims? And expect everything to
| play in your favor? Silicon Valley is trying to profit against
| your best interests.
|
| I don't really say you should be using Firefox, but saying you
| should use some other browser which is not depending on
| Chromium, or forks.
|
| I also can say Safari would not be the best choice here. As
| Apple is the Pioneer on restricting you, the users.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| IMO the best hedges against Googles web monopoly at the moment
| are Apple and Microsoft, not Mozilla.
|
| Apple because of Safari (duh) and Microsoft because they are
| possibly the only company that could reasonably maintain a hard
| Chromium fork in the case of Google going crazy.
|
| Unfortunately all three of them are more or less aligned on
| this issue of remote attestation so I don't really see a path
| forward.
|
| Firefox just doesn't have the market share to matter. If
| everyone had switched to it 10 years ago there might have been
| a chance but the goose is cooked.
| thewataccount wrote:
| > Still excuse after excuse after excuse to just not use
| Firefox.
|
| What happens when Firefox refuses to implement WEI - then
| <insert large social media companies> start to require it?
|
| If WEI becomes a common requirement then Firefox will
| effectively be forced to implement it or it won't be usable as
| a web browser at that point for the average consumer
| popcorncowboy wrote:
| Yeah this gets tricky for Google and Mozilla. Goog need FF
| (and pay for it) to be around and not be meaningless in terms
| of market share because anything else and it's hard for big G
| to keep pretending they don't have a crushingly obvious
| monopoly. Mozilla need Goog because you know, hundreds of
| millions of reasons. FF bowing to WEI would be the ultimate
| capitulation. But as you say, if WEI flies, Moz capitulates
| or dies.
|
| It's tough for Goog. They're playing the end-game card here.
| It's tough, because it's the game winner. On the one hand,
| total and complete domination of the web. On the other..
| Kahn's FTC and the pesky EU technocrats shaking those tired
| old antitrust lawsuits..
|
| I love FF. But if WEI or whatever future version of WEI gets
| up, FF will join the party or consign itself to eventual
| irrelevance. "I use FF for the web, except banking, most
| major corp sites, paid content, and an increasing bunch of
| other stuff - but those four bloggers who still post plain
| HTML pages, FF all the way, go indie web!"
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Sure, this is what it looks like if/when we've fully lost the
| fight.
|
| Those of us who currently recommend Firefox are hoping that
| there's still enough time to do something about this.
|
| Maybe it's already too late, but you might as well try, you
| know?
| fsniper wrote:
| Or Firefox and other browsers against WEI gain a significant
| userbase that these websites can't use WEI to discriminate.
| m463 wrote:
| don't add the code.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Or Brave could just do what they should have done in the first
| place and develop their own browser engine from the ground up -
| by now they ought to have the resources to do so, and the world
| could really do with more than the handful we have now.
| benatkin wrote:
| "Brave's browsers" _distributions of browsers_ , there ftfy
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| "We are a fork, have been all along"
|
| https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304
| benatkin wrote:
| > the "reskinned" claim is complete nonsense
|
| With me that's a straw man, I haven't been using the word
| "reskinned".
|
| The way he mentions Chromium proves my point that it's a
| distribution of Chromium.
|
| Chrome is a browser because Google has Chromium, and they've
| chosen Chrome as the name for their distribution of Chromium.
| But it is also a distribution of Chromium.
| input_sh wrote:
| ...and then you click on that GitHub link and it explains
| that they fetch the Chromium codebase and then apply a set of
| patches on top of it. I wouldn't diminish that work by
| refering to it as just a reskin, but it's also not what I
| have in mind when I hear about something being forked.
|
| They don't maintain a separate Chromium codebase, nor do they
| refer to it as a fork anywhere on GitHub. They do refer to it
| as a customised Chromium, which I think is a far more
| accurate description:
|
| > Brave Core is a set of changes, APIs, and scripts used _for
| customizing Chromium_ to make the Brave browser.
|
| I also think of Chrome as a customised Chromium, not a fork
| of Chromium.
| indymike wrote:
| > I wouldn't diminish that work by refering to it as just a
| reskin, but it's also not what I have in mind when I hear
| about something being forked.
|
| If the goal is to maintain compatibility with what you've
| forked, there are not a lot of other ways to do what Brave
| is doing... when you do the classic fork, the code tends to
| diverge and compatibility decays.
|
| > I also think of Chrome as a customised Chromium, not a
| fork of Chromium.
|
| I've started viewing Chromium based browsers as
| distributions instead of forks.
| thewataccount wrote:
| FWIW brave genuinely has multiple privacy patches that are
| useful and can't be done properly with extensions in chrome.
|
| Several of these either can't be done via a js extension to
| chrome, or can be detected/bypassed. Brave does them in-engine
| which is the better way to do it.
|
| https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Fingerprinting-P...
| saurik wrote:
| It's nice that they are changing their marketing on this a bit
| now that there is a wave to ride and the evils of DRM are coming
| for them; but, let's not forgot that, at the end of the day,
| _Brave is just another company that makes money on ads_ :(, and
| (thereby) has most of the same anti-user incentives.
|
| So, sure... they clearly don't want to be prevented from blocking
| _other peoples ' ads_ (a big part of their pitch); but, blocking
| _their ads_ while still getting paid--which is, of course,
| extremely easy to pull off on an unrestricted computer--is an
| existential threat to their only actual revenue stream which they
| want to protect against.
|
| The ramification: Brave's product managers--and even Brendan Eich
| himself (whom all of the later quotes I have in this comment were
| taken from, directly or indirectly)--have often talked about
| using the very same remote attestation technology to protect
| their SDK and even their browser for the same reasons as Google.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/bw6sek/
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/b7rwbx/
|
| > 1/ native C++/Rust code, no JS tags on page that have zero
| integrity. That means ability to use SGX/TrustZone to check
| integrity and develop private user score from all sensor inputs
| in the enclave; ...
|
| > We already have to deal w/ fraud. That is inherent in any
| system with users and revenue shares or grants. We do it better
| via C++ and (under way) SGX or TrustZone integrity checking + OS
| sensor APIs, vs today's antifraud scripts that are routinely
| fooled.
|
| > What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an
| antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open
| source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page;
| ... (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/97trex/comment/...
|
| > Part of the roadmap (details in update) is a BAT SDK. Obviously
| it would be open source, but more: we would require Secure Remote
| Attestation (Intel SGX broken but ARM TrustZone as used by
| Trustonic may be ok) to prove integrity of the SDK code in app.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Blocking Brave's ads is literally three clicks. I don't care if
| I don't get paid if I block ads. What I don't want is to lose
| the ability to block ads or to allow websites to block me for
| using an unapproved system. Google seems to be working for both
| of those things while I don't see any chance Brave ever allows
| either.
| saurik wrote:
| You don't care... but _Brave cares_. The point here is that
| Brave has been talking up the same user-hostile tech for the
| same user-hostile reason: to prevent "ad fraud", as they are
| an ad company, like it or not.
|
| ...and, frankly, Brave isn't going to have any choice in
| implementing Google's plot: the web simply isn't going to
| work in Brave anymore if they don't, as web pages will just
| start refusing to give Brave any content.
|
| The real issues are the very existence of remote attestation
| technology and advertisements as a business model / corporate
| incentive structure; imagine living in a world where we made
| both of these illegal.
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