Web Browser Security Team iBrowse Sha-Myra Richardson John Darr

Web Browser Security Team iBrowse Sha-Myra Richardson John Darr

Why this is important: People who use the internet use web browsers. Transfer personal information Consumers make transactions through web browsers in which sensitive information is transferred. online shopping online bill-pay and other money transactions

Who can benefit: Everyone Almost everyone has used the internet for exchanging money in some fashion. With this research and hopefully web browsers becoming more secure, people will not have to worry whether their money is going to the right person or if someone is on the other end taking their identity.

Problems Browser Attacks Man In the Middle Spoofing JavaScript/ActiveX malicious code

Research Princeton University Conducted study on how people could access users browser histories and go through cookies (stored passwords, account information, etc.) Most browsers fail to catch such attacks sometimes even with the proper software installed.

MIT Performed a study in which people would have to detect spoofing University of Pennsylvania Designed a “secure web browser,” which was actually successful in protecting against attacks.

Suggested Improvements The main thing that needs to be improved the most is the user themselves. study by MIT they noticed that: In the “Users fail to continuously check the browser’s security indicators, since maintaining security is not the user’s primary goal. Although users sometimes noticed suspicious signs coming from the indicators, they either did not know how to interpret the signs or they explained them away.”

With this being said, there needs to be more education so that whenever a user enters a new webpage, they automatically think “is this page secure?”. If the user goes into each website with that mentality then they will be much safer and have a much less chance to be attacked.

Jennifer Kahng’s Study

Workload distribution Most of this project was spent working together in the Woodward 335 lab.

Conclusion Web browsers are becoming more and more secure. Also, there are more downloads available to detect certain attacks that you might face. Even though they are becoming more secure, it is up to the user to be sure that they are secure from attacks and other predators.

Future Work Since technology is everchanging, there may be no end-all problem solution. The objective which researchers have on the security of web browsers is to continue to try to fix current problems as well as look out for those that are developing.