Security News > 2020 > February > A new way for securing web browsers from hackers

A powerful new approach to securing web browsers is getting its first real-world application in the Firefox browser.

The new approach is now part of a test release of the Firefox browser for the Linux operating system and could be available on Windows and MacOS platforms within a few months.

Web browsers use libraries of code to do common activities - such as rendering media files including photos, videos and audio - but these libraries often have unreported bugs that can be exploited by hackers to take control of a computer.

To prevent hackers from exploiting these vulnerabilities, the researchers are adapting WebAssembly, a security mechanism originally designed to speed up web applications that run within a browser while keeping those applications within "Secure sandboxes" that prevent malicious code from taking over the user's computer.

In the researchers' new approach, some of the browser's own internal components - those responsible for the decoding of media files - would be shifted into WebAssembly sandboxes.

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