---
type: Article
title: Protecting Browsers from Extension Vulnerabilities
description: Manual review of 25 popular Firefox extensions found only 3 needed full privileges while 19 used interfaces more powerful than their features required. A Datalog deduction over 613 labelled XPCOM interfaces mapped 147 upward edges where privilege escalation is reachable.
resource: "https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2010/protecting-browsers-extension-vulnerabilities/"
tags: [article, webseclist-reference, browser-extension, measurement-study, privilege-escalation, sandbox-escape, javascript, static-analysis, mitigation, defence, same-origin-policy, owasp-a01-2021]
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resource: "https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2010/protecting-browsers-extension-vulnerabilities/"
title: Protecting Browsers from Extension Vulnerabilities
author: Adam Barth, Adrienne Porter Felt, Prateek Saxena, Aaron Boodman
also_at:
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authors:
- Adam Barth
- Adrienne Porter Felt
- Prateek Saxena
- Aaron Boodman
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# Protecting Browsers from Extension Vulnerabilities
**Protecting Browsers from Extension Vulnerabilities** - Adam Barth, Adrienne Porter Felt, Prateek Saxena, Aaron Boodman, Publisher not stated.
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# Protecting Browsers from Extension Vulnerabilities
Protecting Browsers from Extension Vulnerabilities
Adam Barth, Adrienne Porter Felt, Prateek Saxena Aaron Boodman
University of California, Berkeley Google, Inc.
{abarth, afelt, prateeks}@eecs.berkeley.edu aa@google.com
Abstract browser’s full privileges. If an attacker can exploit an ex-
tension vulnerability, the attacker can usurp the extension’s
Browser extensions are remarkably popular, with one in broad privileges and install malware on the user’s machine.
three Firefox users running at least one extension. Although At this year’s DEFCON, Liverani and Freeman presented
well-intentioned, extension developers are often not security attacks against a number of popular Firefox extensions [24].
experts and write buggy code that can be exploited by ma- In one example, if the user dragged an image from a mali-
licious web site operators. In the Firefox extension system, cious web page into the extension, the web site operator
these exploits are dangerous because extensions run with could install a remote desktop server on the user’s machine
the user’s full privileges and can read and write arbitrary and take control of the user’s mouse and keyboard.
files and launch new processes. In this paper, we analyze These attacks raise the question of whether browser ex-
25 popular Firefox extensions and find that 88% of these tensions require such a high level of privilege. To investi-
extensions need less than the full set of available privileges. gate this question, we examine 25 popular Firefox exten-
Additionally, we find that 76% of these extensions use un- sions to determine how much privilege each one requires.
necessarily powerful APIs, making it difficult to reduce their We find that only 3 of the 25 extensions require full sys-
privileges. We propose a new browser extension system that tem access. The remainder are over-privileged, needlessly
improves security by using least privilege, privilege separa- increasing the severity of extension vulnerabilities. An ex-
tion, and strong isolation. Our system limits the misdeeds tension system that narrows this privilege gap would reduce
an attacker can perform through an extension vulnerabil- the severity of extension exploits, but the Firefox extension
ity. Our design has been adopted as the Google Chrome platform does not provide sufficiently fine-grained privi-
extension system. leges. For example, many extensions store settings with an
interface that can read and write arbitrary files.
We propose a new extension system, built with security
in mind. In particular, we aim to protect users from benign-
1 Introduction
but-buggy extensions by designing least privilege, privilege
separation, and strong isolation into our extension system.
Web browser extensions are phenomenally popular: Instead of running with the user’s full privileges, extensions
roughly one third of Firefox users have at least one in our system are limited to a set of privileges chosen at
browser extension [23]. Browser extensions modify the install time. If an extension later becomes compromised,
core browser user experience by changing the browser’s the extension will be unable to increase this set of privi-
user interface and interacting with web sites. For exam- leges. In particular, our case studies of Firefox extensions
ple, the Skype browser extension rewrites phone numbers suggest that most extensions do not require the privilege to
found in web pages into hyperlinks that launch the epony- execute arbitrary code; consequently, the privilege to exe-
mous IP-telephony application [5]. Although there have cute arbitrary code will often be unavailable to an attacker
been several recent proposals for new web browser archi- who compromises an extension in our system.
tectures [19, 11, 33], little attention has been paid to the In addition to limiting the overall privileges of each ex-
architecture of browser extension systems. tension, our system further reduces the attack surface of
Many extensions interact extensively with arbitrary web extensions by forcing developers to divide their extensions
pages, creating a large attack surface that attackers can into three components: content scripts, an extension core,
scour for vulnerabilities. In this paper, we focus on benign- and a native binary (see Figure 1):
but-buggy extensions. Most extensions are not written by
security experts, and vulnerabilities in benign extensions • Each content script has direct access to the DOM of
are worrisome because Firefox extensions run with the a single web page and is thereby exposed to poten-
Attacker
Figure 1. Extensions are divided into three components, each with progressively more privileges and
less exposure to malicious web content.
tially malicious input. However, content scripts have Our extension system design has been adopted by
no other privileges except for the ability to send mes- Google Chrome and is available in Google Chrome 4. Al-
sages to the extension core. though it is difficult to predict how developers will use the
extension system, we believe that this architecture will pro-
• The extension core contains the bulk of the extension vide a solid foundation for building more secure extensions.
privileges, but the extension core can only interact
with web content via XMLHttpRequest and content
scripts. Even the extension core does not have direct 2 Attacks on Extensions
access to the host machine.
A browser extension is a third-party software module
• An extension can optionally include a native binary that extends the functionality of a web browser, letting users
that can access the host machine with the user’s full customize their browsing experience. Because extensions
privileges. The native binary interacts with the ex- interact directly with untrusted web content, extensions are
tension core via the standard NPAPI interface used by at risk of attack from malicious web site operators and ac-
Flash and other browser plug-ins. tive network attackers. In this section, we present a generic
To gain the user’s full privileges, an attacker would need threat model for extension security that applies to both the
to convince the extension to forward malicious input from Firefox extension system and the new extension system we
the content script to the extension core and from the exten- introduce in this paper. We then focus our attention on the
sion core to the native binary, where the input would need Firefox extension system, providing background material
to exploit a vulnerability. We argue that exploiting such a and examples of real attacks.
multi-layer vulnerability is more difficult than exploiting a
simple cross-site scripting hole in a Firefox extension. 2.1 Threat Model
Finally, the different components of an extension are iso-
lated from each other by strong protection boundaries: each We focus on benign-but-buggy extensions: we assume
component runs in a separate operating system process. The the extension developer is well-intentioned but not a secu-
content script and the extension core run in sandboxed pro- rity expert. The attacker attempts to corrupt the extension
cesses that cannot use most operating system services. As and usurp its privileges. For example, the attacker might
a first layer of defense, the content script is isolated from be able to install malware on the user’s machine if the ex-
its associated web page by running in a separate JavaScript tension has arbitrary file access. We assume the attacker is
heap. Although both the content script and the web page unable to entice the user into downloading or running na-
have access to the same underlying DOM, the two never ex- tive executables. We further assume the browser itself is
change JavaScript pointers, helping prevent JavaScript ca- vulnerability-free, letting us focus on the additional attack
pability leaks [12]. surface provided by extensions.
We consider two related threat models: a web attacker • Replacing Native APIs. A malicious web page can
and an active network attacker. The web attacker controls a confuse (and ultimately exploit) a browser extension
web site, canonically https://attacker.com/, that by replacing native DOM APIs with methods of its
the user visits. (Note that we do not assume that the user own definition. These fake methods might superfi-
confuses the attacker’s web site with another web site.) Typ- cially behave like the native methods [9] and trick
ically, the attacker attempts to corrupt an extension when the an extension into performing some misdeed. To
extension interacts with the attacker’s web site. In addition help mitigate this class of attack, Firefox automati-
to the abilities of a web attacker, an active network attacker cally wraps references to untrusted objects with an
can intercept, modify, and inject network traffic (e.g., HTTP XPCNativeWrapper. An XPCNativeWrapper
responses). The active network attacker threat model is ap- is analogous to X-ray goggles: viewing a JavaScript
propriate, e.g., for a wireless network in a coffee shop. object through an XPCNativeWrapper shows the
underlying native object, ignoring any modifications
made by the page’s JavaScript. However, this security
Plug-ins. In this paper, we focus on browser extensions,
mechanism has had a long history of implementation
which differ from browser plug-ins. Plug-ins render specific
bugs [4, 3, 1]. Recent work has demonstrated that these
media types (such as PDF and Flash) or expose additional
bugs are exploitable in some extensions [24].
APIs to web content (such as the Gears APIs). Plug-ins are
requested explicitly by web sites, usually by loading con-
• JavaScript Capability Leaks. JavaScript capability
tent with a specific MIME type. By way of contrast, ex-
leaks [12] are another avenue for exploiting exten-
tensions interact with web pages without their explicit con-
sions. If an extension leaks one of its own objects to
sent. Although plug-in security is an important area of re-
a malicious web page, the attacker can often access
search [19, 18], securing browser extensions requires differ-
other JavaScript objects, including powerful extension
ent techniques.
APIs. For example, an early version of Greasemonkey
exposed a privileged version of XMLHttpRequest
2.2 Exploiting Firefox Extensions to every web page [34], letting attackers circumvent
the browser’s same-origin policy by issuing HTTP re-
In Firefox, browser extensions run with the same privi- quests with the user’s cookies to arbitrary web sites
leges as the browser itself. Firefox extensions have full ac- and reading back the responses.
cess to browser internals and the user’s operating system.
Extensions can change the functionality of the browser, • Mixed Content. An active network attacker can con-
modify the behavior of web sites, run arbitrary code, and trol content loaded via HTTP. The most severe form
access the file system. Firefox extensions combine two dan- of this attack occurs when a browser extension loads
gerous qualities: high privilege and rich interaction with un- a script over HTTP and runs it. The attacker can re-
trusted web content. Taken together, these qualities risk ex- place this script and hijack the extension’s privileges
posing powerful privileges to attackers. We describe four to install malware. A similar, but less powerful, attack
classes of attacks against browser extensions and the rele- occurs when an extension injects an HTTP script into
vant mitigations provided by the Firefox extension system: an HTTPS page. For example, we discovered that an
extension [6] injects an HTTP script into the HTTPS
• Cross-Site Scripting. Extension cross-site script- version of Gmail. (We reported this vulnerability to
ing (XSS) vulnerabilities result from interacting di- the developers of the extension on August 12, 2009,
rectly with untrusted web content. For example, if an and the developers released a fixed version thereafter.)
extension uses eval or document.write without
sanitizing the input, the attacker might be able to in- Even though we might be able to design defenses for each
ject a script into the extension. In one recent exam- of these attack classes, we argue that the underlying issue is
ple [24], a popular RSS aggregation extension evalu- that Firefox extensions interact directly with untrusted con-
ated data from the element of an tent while possessing a high level of privilege.
arbitrary web site without proper sanitization. To help
mitigate XSS attacks, Firefox provides a sandbox API,
evalInSandbox. When evaluating a script using 3 Limiting Firefox Extension Privileges
evalInSandbox, the script runs without the exten-
sion’s privileges, thereby preventing the script from A natural approach to mitigating extension vulnerabil-
causing much harm. However, use of this sandbox ities is to reduce the privileges granted to extensions. To
evaluation is discretionary and does not cover every evaluate the feasibility of this approach, we studied 25 pop-
kind of interaction with untrusted content. ular Firefox extensions to determine how much privilege
!"#$%&'( /012*
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(a) Most powerful behavior. (b) Most powerful interface.
Figure 2. The chart on the left shows the severity ratings of the most dangerous behaviors exhibited
by each extension. The chart on the right shows the security ratings of the extension interfaces used
to implement these behaviors.
each needs to implement its features. In addition to pre- source code. (This methodology under-approximates the set
senting our case studies, we also present an algorithm for of interfaces.) We then manually correlated the interfaces
finding methods in the Firefox extension API that lead from with the extensions’ functionality. This process could not
a less-privileged interface to a more-privileged interface. be automated because understanding high-level functional-
ity requires human judgement.
3.1 Case Studies To compare the set of interfaces with extension function-
ality, we assigned one of five ratings (critical, high, medium,
We review 25 extensions manually to determine their low, and none) to each interface and functionality based on
privilege requirements: the Firefox Security Severity Ratings [8]:
1. We analyze the behavior of an extension to determine • Critical: Can run arbitrary code on the user’s system
how much privilege an extension needs to realize its (e.g., arbitrary file access)
functionality, letting us compare its required privileges
• High: Can access site-specific confidential informa-
to its actual privileges.
tion (e.g., cookies and password) or the Document Ob-
2. We analyze the implementation of an extension to de- ject Model (DOM) of all web pages
termine how much power the extension receives, given
• Medium: Can access private user data (e.g., recent his-
the set of interfaces it uses to realize its functionality.
tory) or the DOM of specific web pages
This lets us evaluate how much we could reduce its
privileges if we limited access to interfaces. • Low: Can annoy the user
We find that most extensions do not require arbitrary file • None: No security privileges (e.g., a string) or privi-
system access (the most powerful privilege), meaning that leges limited to the extension itself
most extensions are over-privileged. We also find that ex-
tensions commonly use powerful interfaces to accomplish
simple tasks because the Firefox APIs are coarse-grained. Results. Of the 25 subject extensions, only 3 require criti-
cal privileges (see Figure 2(a)). Therefore, 22 of the subject
extensions are over-privileged because all extensions have
Methodology. We randomly selected two extensions the privilege to perform critical tasks. Despite the fact that
from each of the 13 categories in the “recommended” sec- only 3 need critical privileges, 19 use a critical-rated in-
tion of the Firefox Add-on directory. (See Appendix A for terface (see Figure 2(b)). An additional 3 use high-rated
a list.) We excluded one of the selected extensions because interfaces despite needing only medium or less privileges,
it was distributed only as a binary. We verified that the 25 meaning that a total of 19 extensions use interfaces that have
subject extensions were also highly ranked in the “popu- broader privileges than they require. Figure 3 shows the de-
lar” directory. To determine the extensions’ functionality, tailed results. We summarize these results below:
we ran each extension and manually exercised its user in-
terface. We also located usage of the extension system API • Three extensions, all download managers, require the
by searching for explicit interface names in the extensions’ ability to create new processes. (These are the only
Behavior Interface Disparity? Frequency
Process launching (C) Process launching (C) No 3 (12%)
User chooses a file (N) Arbitrary file access (C) Yes 11 (44%)
Extension-specific files (N) Arbitrary file access (C) Yes 10 (40%)
Extension-specific SQLite (N) Arbitrary SQLite access (H) Yes 3 (12%)
Arbitrary network access (H) Arbitrary network access (H) No 8 (40%)
Specific domain access (M) Arbitrary network access (H) Yes 2 (8%)
Arbitrary DOM access (H) Arbitrary DOM access (H) No 9 (36%)
Page for display only (L) Arbitrary DOM access (H) Yes 3 (12%)
DOM of specific sites (M) Arbitrary DOM access (H) Yes 2 (8%)
Highlighted text/images (L) Arbitrary DOM access (H) Yes 2 (8%)
Password, login managers (H) Password, login managers (H) No 3 (12%)
Cookie manager (H) Cookie manager (H) No 2 (8%)
Same-extension prefs (N) Browser & all ext prefs (H) Yes 21 (84%)
Language preferences (M) Browser & all ext prefs (H) Yes 1 (4%)
Figure 3. The frequency of security-relevant behaviors. The security rating of each behavior is ab-
breviated in parentheses. If the interface’s privilege is greater than the required behavioral privilege,
there is a disparity.
three extensions that actually require critical privi- Unfortunately, reducing the privileges of extensions in
leges.) One extension converts file types using system the Firefox extensions system is difficult because the Fire-
utilities, another runs a user-supplied virus scanner on fox extension API bundles many privileges into a single
downloaded files, and the third launches a new process interface. This is evidenced by the 19 extensions that use
to use the operating system’s shutdown command. excessively powerful interfaces: 16 use critical-rated in-
terfaces and 3 use high-rated interfaces without needing
• None of the extensions we studied require arbitrary file that level of privilege. For example, most extensions use
access. Several extensions access files selected by a the preference service to store extension-local preferences.
file open dialog, and most use files to store extension- This service can also change browser-wide preferences and
local data. The download managers interact with files preferences belonging to other extensions.
as they are downloaded. We identified the file system interface as a common point
• 17 extensions require network access (e.g., observing of excessive privileges. Most extensions use the file system
network data) and/or web page access (e.g., manipu- interface, which can read and write arbitrary files. These
lating a page’s DOM). 10 require network access and extensions could make use of lower-privilege file storage
11 require access to web pages. Of the 10 extensions interfaces if such interfaces existed. For example, 11 of the
that require network access, 2 require access only to a extensions could be limited to files selected by the user via
specific set of origins. a file open dialog (analogous to the HTML file upload con-
trol), and 10 extensions could be limited to an extension-
• Nearly all of the extensions require access to an local persistent store (like the HTML 5 localStorage
extension-local preference store to persist their own API) or an extension-specific directory. The download man-
preferences, but only one changes global browser pref- agers could also be limited to the downloads folder.
erences (to switch languages).
3.2 The Security Lattice
Discussion. Although every Firefox extension runs with
the user’s full privileges, only three of the extensions we Even if a developer explicitly requests only a small num-
analyze actually require these privileges. The remaining 22 ber of interfaces, other interfaces could be reachable from
extensions exhibit a privilege gap: they run with more priv- that set. For example, a developer might request access
ileges than required. Moreover, none of the extensions re- to a low-type object with a method that returns a critical-
quire arbitrary file access and only 70% require network or type object; even though the developer has not asked for the
web page access. The extension system can reduce the priv- critical-type object, it is available. We consider this a form
ileges of these extensions without impacting functionality. of privilege escalation. To fully limit the privilege levels of
` ρ ,→η α α.subtype(β) ` ρ ,→η α α.method(β)
η S UBTYPING η M ETHOD
` ρ ,→ β ` ρ ,→ β
α.getter(β) α.setter(β)
G ETTER S ETTER
α.method(1 → β) α.method(β → 1)
T YPE F ORGERY
` ρ ,→ρ α
` ρ ,→η α → β ` ρ ,→γ α ` η ,→δ β
δ
R ETURN
` ρ ,→ β
` ρ ,→η α → β ` ρ ,→γ α ` η ,→δ β
PARAMETER
` η ,→γ α
Figure 4. Inference rules for reachability in a type system with type forgery, such as the Firefox
extension API.
extensions, we must control these escalation points, either Type bar has a method getFile that returns a file type.
by adding a reference monitor (e.g., to implement an access We do not know whether an implementation of foo actu-
control approach) or by taming the interface (e.g., to imple- ally ever calls bar.getFile, but we know it is possible.
ment an object-capability approach). We analyze a subset
of the Firefox extension API to find these escalation points.
Deductive System. Our deductive system (see Figure 4)
In Firefox, extensions and internal browser components
computes which additional interfaces a principal (the
use the same interfaces (known as XPCOM interfaces).
browser or an extension) can obtain from one interface.
These strictly typed interfaces are defined in a CORBA-
Along with the interface name, the rules track which princi-
like Interface Description Language (IDL). We analyzed
pal implements each concrete instance of the interface. We
the XPCOM interfaces from Firefox 3.5 by adding a Dat-
write ρ ,→η α when principal ρ has a reference to an in-
alog back-end to the Firefox IDL compiler. By default,
terface α implemented by principal η. The deduction rules
these interfaces are implemented internally by the browser.
then describe various ways a reference to one interface can
However, extensions can (and do) replace these implemen-
lead to a reference to another interface. For example, if ρ
tations. For example, the SafeCache [22] browser extension
possesses both a method of type α → β implemented by
replaces the HTTP cache. Regardless of the implementation
η and an object with interface α implemented by γ, then
of an XPCOM interface, the browser enforces the return and
ρ can give the α object to η by calling the method. After-
parameter types declared in the interface description.
wards, η will have a reference to an object with interface α
We analyze the API for escalation points by organizing
implemented by δ.
the XPCOM interfaces into a security lattice. We manu-
One subtle rule in the deductive system is the type
ally label the severity of 613 interfaces (of 1582 total), in-
forgery rule. This rule states that every principal can create
cluding all the interfaces used by the subject extensions.
an object that implements an arbitrary interface. This rule is
We then automatically compute when an extension with a
appropriate for XPCOM because an extension can create a
reference to one interface might be able to obtain a ref-
JavaScript object that implements an XPCOM interface by
erence to another interface by deductive inference on the
implementing the requisite methods and announcing sup-
types used in the interfaces. Our deductive system is an
port in its queryInterface method. This technique is
over-approximation because we do not consider the actual
useful to attacks because an attacker can use a “forged” ob-
implementation of the interfaces. Deductions based on the
ject to call a method the attacker could not call otherwise.
handling of input parameters might be overly conservative
because it is not known which methods are called on the
input parameters in the implementation. For example, type Reachability. We computed the security lattice for the
foo has a method that accepts type bar as a parameter. Firefox extension interfaces by implementing our rules in
4.1 Least Privilege
Instead of running with the user’s full privileges, exten-
sions run with a restricted set of privileges. The browser
grants an extension access only to those privileges explic-
itly requested in the extension’s manifest. By requiring ex-
tensions to declare their privileges at install time, an attacker
who compromises an extension is limited to these privileges
at runtime. For example, consider the manifest for the sam-
ple Gmail Checker extension [13]:
{
"name": "Google Mail Checker",
"description": "Displays the number of unread
messages...",
"version": "1.2",
Figure 5. The Firefox extension API reacha- "background_page": "background.html",
"permissions": [
bility graph, from our deductive system. Up- "tabs",
ward edges could lead to privilege escalation. "http://*.google.com/",
"https://*.google.com/"
],
"browser_action": { "default_title": "" },
Datalog. We add an edge from one interface to another if "icons": { "128": "icon_128.png" }
}
our deductive system computes that a reference to an object
with the first interface implemented by one principal could In the example, Gmail Checker needs access to subdomains
lead to an object with the second interface implemented by of google.com and the tabs API. An extension can re-
the same principal. Notice that the type forgery rule permits quest a number of different privileges in its manifest:
us to reason about each interface individually instead of re-
• Execute Arbitrary Code. Although our case study
quiring us to build a lattice over sets of interfaces. Figure 5
suggests that a majority of extensions do not require
summarizes the lattice by coalescing all the interfaces with
the privilege to execute arbitrary code, some exten-
the same security rating into a single vertex and contracting
sions do require this privilege. To request the privilege
the unlabeled interfaces.
to execute arbitrary code, an extension lists a native
Of the 2920 edges in the lattice, 147 edges go “up” the
binary in its manifest.
lattice. These upward edges represent potential escalation
points that make reducing the privilege of extensions diffi- • Web Site Access. Extensions can also request the
cult. Because our analysis is an over-approximation, some privilege to interact with web sites. Instead of re-
of these edges might not actually be exploitable given the ceiving access to all web sites, extensions designate
Firefox implementation of the extension interfaces. How- which web sites they would like to access by ori-
ever, even these edges might become exploitable if an exten- gin. For example, Gmail Checker requests access
sion replaces the built-in implementation of the relevant in- to Google by listing http://*.google.com and
terface. To retrofit security onto the Firefox extension API, https://*.google.com in its manifest. If the
we recommend preventing privilege escalation by removing extension were compromised, the attacker would not
these edges, either by adding runtime access control checks gain access to https://bank.com.
or by taming the interfaces at design time. When designing
• API Access. Figure 6 shows how extensions can im-
a new extension system, we suggest not introducing escala-
plement their functionality using the extension sys-
tion points into the security lattice.
tem. Extensions use standard web platform APIs (e.g.,
HTML5 storage) to access files, storage, web pages,
4 Google Chrome Extension System and the network. In addition to the usual web platform
APIs, extensions can also request access to extension
In this section, we describe and evaluate the security ar- APIs, which are grouped according to functionality.
chitecture of the Google Chrome extension system. We fo- For example, the extension system contains an API
cus on the aspects of the design related to protecting users group called tabs for interacting with the browser’s
from benign-but-buggy extensions. The security model for tab strip (creating tabs, moving tabs, etc.). An exten-
the extension system is based on least privilege, privilege sion is granted access to an API group only if the API’s
separation, and strong isolation. group appears in the extension’s manifest.
Behavior Implementation
User chooses a file (N) File picker, with (N)
Extension-specific data & preferences (N) HTML5 storage (N)
Specific-domain network access (M) List specific XHR domains in manifest (M)
DOM of specific sites (M) List specific domains in manifest (M)
Page for display only (L) Open a new frame with the page (L)
Highlighted text/images (L) Not yet supported – full DOM access required (M/H)
Figure 6. The proposed extension system supports fine-grained implementation of behaviors, re-
moving most of the privilege disparity between behavior and implementation.
Without additional encouragement, developers are likely to • Content Scripts. Content scripts, written in
request the maximum possible privileges for their exten- JavaScript, let extensions interact directly with un-
sions, reducing the benefits of least privilege. To encour- trusted web content. A content script is newly instan-
age developers to request the minimum required privileges, tiated for each web page, and it has direct access to the
we alter the user experience for installing an extension from DOM of the page via the standard DOM APIs. Content
the Google-controlled extension gallery based on the maxi- scripts are only added to pages from origins that match
mum privilege level the extension requests. The most dan- the permissions defined in the manifest file. Content
gerous class of extensions (extensions with the privilege scripts do not have access to the powerful extension
to execute arbitrary code) are not permitted in the gallery APIs provided by the browser. Beyond the DOM API,
unless the developer signs a contract with Google. An- the only other privilege granted to content scripts is
other approach is to review extensions manually, as in the the privilege to send JSON [2] messages to the exten-
addons.mozilla.org gallery. In this approach, the sion core via a postMessage-like API. Like regular
manifests make it easier for reviewers to prioritize reviews web content, content scripts cannot make cross-origin
of low-privilege extensions. This incentivizes developers to XMLHttpRequests.
request fewer privileges to reduce review latency. Whether
these incentives are sufficient to encourage least privilege • Extension Core. The extension core, written in
will depend largely on whether developers can gain more HTML and JavaScript, controls the extension’s user
exposure for their extensions by appearing in the gallery interface (e.g., browser actions, pop-ups) and has ac-
sooner or more prominently. We examine a set of Google cess to the extension APIs declared in the extension’s
Chrome extensions in Section 4.4 to see whether developers manifest. The extension core contains the majority
are following the principle of least privilege. of the extension’s privileges, but it is insulated from
Extensions can also be installed from arbitrary web sites. direct interaction with untrusted web content. To in-
This install experience is different from installing an exten- teract with untrusted content, the extension core can
sion from the gallery. When installing an extension from either (1) communicate with a content script or (2)
outside the gallery, the user experience is the same as the issue an XMLHttpRequest. Both of these mecha-
user experience for downloading and running a native ex- nisms require the extension author to take explicit ac-
ecutable. An attacker who can trick a user into installing tion and restrict the interaction to plain data. The man-
a malicious extension this way can likely already trick the ifest file defines what origins the extension core can
user into running an arbitrary executable, giving the attacker make XMLHttpRequests to.
little additional leverage.
• Native Binary. Only native binaries can run arbitrary
4.2 Privilege Separation code or access arbitrary files. To gain these privileges,
the extension developer must supply a native Netscape
To make it more difficult for a malicious web site Plug-in API (NPAPI) binary. For example, on Win-
to usurp an extension’s privileges, the extension platform dows such a binary consists of a dynamically linked
forces developers to divide their extensions into multiple library (DLL) with certain entry points. By default,
components: content scripts, the extension core, and a na- the native binary can interact only with the extension
tive binary (see Figure 1): core (e.g., not with content scripts). Furthermore, the
interaction is typically limited to the interfaces defined
when the native binary was compiled, but, of course,
the native binary can re-compile itself because it can
run arbitrary code. Similarly, the manifest lets devel- new manifest requests critical privileges and changes the in-
opers expose their native binaries to web pages be- stall experience). When the browser reloads the extension,
cause there are no technical means for stopping an ex- the updated version inhabits the same security context as
tension that can run arbitrary code from installing a the old version, analogous to re-visiting a web site. In par-
regular browser plug-in. ticular, the updated extension still has access to its previous
persistent state because localStorage is segregated by
Content scripts, which have the largest attack surface, do origin and its origin remains the same.
not have a direct channel to the component with critical
privileges. By dividing the extension’s privileges among Process Isolation. Each component of the extension runs
three components, the extension system makes it harder for in a different process. The extension core and the native bi-
an attacker to exploit the user’s machine. To run arbitrary nary each receive dedicated processes. Content scripts run
code, the attacker first convinces the extension’s content in the same process as their associated web pages. This pro-
script to forward malicious input to the extension core. The cess isolation has two benefits: it defends against browser
attacker then convinces the extension core to forward the errors and low-level exploits. Process isolation helps pro-
malicious input to the native binary (assuming one even ex- tect the extension core from browser implementation er-
ists). Finally, the attacker would need to exploit a vulnera- rors, such as cross-origin JavaScript capability leaks [12],
bility in the native binary. because JavaScript objects cannot leak from one process to
another. Process isolation also defends against low-level
4.3 Isolation Mechanisms exploits in the browser. For example, if a malicious web
site operator manages to corrupt the renderer process [11]
The extension system uses three mechanisms to isolate (e.g., via a buffer overflow), the attacker will not be granted
extension components from each other and from web con- access to the extension APIs because the extension core re-
tent. First, we leverage the same-origin web sandbox by sides in another process.
running the extension core in a unique origin designated by
a public key. Second, we run the extension core and native Isolated Worlds. We provide an additional layer of isola-
binaries in their own processes. Finally, content scripts run tion between the content script and the untrusted web site’s
in a separate JavaScript heap from untrusted web content. JavaScript environment by running the content script in an
isolated world. Instead of accessing the underlying DOM
Origin. In the web platform, the authority of a script is data structures via the same JavaScript objects used by the
derived from its origin (in particular, the scheme, host, page, each content script accesses the DOM with its “own”
and port of the URL from which the browser obtained the JavaScript objects. Content scripts and web pages therefore
script). However, extension scripts are not loaded from never exchange JavaScript pointers, making it more difficult
the network; extensions are stored in the user’s file system. for a malicious web page to confuse the content script (e.g.,
Consequently, extensions do not have an origin in the usual with a JavaScript rootkit [9]).
sense. We assign an “origin” to an extension by including a This design changes the normal one-to-one relation be-
public key in the extension’s URL as follows: tween DOM implementation objects and their JavaScript
representations (see Figure 7) into a one-to-many rela-
chrome-extension:// tion (see Figure 8). For example, both the page and the
ilpnegfhimflflifcnmgpeihglhedbnn/ content script have a global variable named document,
but these variables refer to two distinct JavaScript objects.
When loading an extension, the browser verifies that the Consistency is still maintained: when either script calls a
extension package is “self-signed” by the public key in its DOM method, such as appendChild, both objects are
URL. Placing the extension’s public key in its URL frees the updated to reflect the modified document tree. However,
extension system from depending on a central naming au- when a script modifies a non-standard DOM property, such
thority (like a public-key infrastructure or DNS), reducing as document.foo, the modification is not reflected in
the attack surface of the platform and simplifying extension the other object. These rules help maintain the invariant
signing. By using this approach, we can reuse the web’s that JavaScript objects (i.e., non-primitive values) are never
same-origin machinery to isolate extensions from browser transmitted between worlds.
internals, web pages, and each other. The standard one-to-one relation is implemented using a
This approach to extension identity also makes updating hash table keyed by DOM implementation object (depicted
extensions easy. If the browser encounters a newer exten- as black rectangles in the figures). For isolated worlds, we
sion package signed with the same public key, the browser create a hash table for each world and choose which hash
can replace the installed version of the extension (unless the table to use based on the currently executing world.
Medium
DOM (C++) JavaScript (V8)
Critical 2
3
High
20
Figure 7. The normal one-to-one relation
between DOM implementation objects and
JavaScript representations. Figure 9. Highest privilege of popular Google
Chrome extensions.
JavaScript (V8)
W1 (Page)
We then measure the privilege gap by comparing the exten-
sion’s requested privileges with its behavior. The extensions
we survey are not as diverse as the extensions in the Firefox
survey (Section 3.1) because the Google Chrome extension
DOM (C++)
W2 (Extension 1) platform is new and 9 of the extensions were developed by
Google employees.
Figure 9 shows the highest severity privileges that ex-
tensions ask for in their manifests. Of the three critical-
rated extensions, two include NPAPI plug-in and one in-
W3 (Extension 2)
jects content scripts into documents from the local file
system. The 20 high-rated extensions request arbitrary
web/network access, and the two medium-rated extensions
request web/network access for a limited number of origins.
We found one extension (Cooliris) that requests more priv-
ileges than required to implement its behavior. This ex-
tension requires 3D accelerated graphics, which could be
Figure 8. The one-to-many relation caused by provided to extensions without granting the extension the
running content scripts in isolated worlds. ability to run arbitrary code. (The current APIs do not pro-
vide this functionality.) However, the rest of the extensions
request appropriate privileges given their feature set. We
When entering the JavaScript virtual machine (e.g., when conclude that extensions in the Google Chrome extension
invoking a callback function registered via setTimeout), system posses significantly fewer privileges than extensions
the browser must start executing the function in the proper in the Firefox extension system.
world. If the browser executes the function in the wrong In addition to analyzing the highest severity privilege re-
world, we risk leaking a JavaScript pointer between worlds. quested by an extension overall, we also examine how priv-
To select the correct world, we cache a reference to the ap- ileges are separated within the extension (see Figure 10).
propriate world on the function object itself at the time the Even if the extension as a whole has arbitrary DOM ac-
callback is registered. cess via content scripts, its core might have access only to
a limited set of origins, or vice versa. During our review,
4.4 Evaluation we found that two extensions requested more privileges for
their core than necessary. However, the privileges requested
Reduced Privileges. We evaluated the privileges of the for the core extension were a subset of the privileges re-
25 most popular Google Chrome extensions [17]. (See Ap- quested for the content scripts, leaving the overall privilege
pendix B for a list.) For each extension, we examine its level of the extension the same. It appears that develop-
manifest to determine the privileges requested by the exten- ers overall are willing to limit DOM and network access to
sion, both for the core extension and for its content scripts. small sets of origins when possible.
Privilege # of extensions 5 Related Work
Content script DOM access
Read-only file system access 1
In addition to the Firefox extension system we analyze
All sites 14
in this paper, Firefox has a second, experimental extension
Limited number of sites 3
system: Jetpack [27]. Similar to the extension system we
No sites 8
propose, Jetpack exposes browser functionality via narrow
Core extension XHR access
interfaces. Currently, however, each Jetpack extension runs
All sites 12
with the user’s full privileges and has access to the complete
Limited number of sites 8
Firefox extension API. As Jetpack matures, we expect the
No sites 5
Firefox developers to restrict the privileges of Jetpack ex-
Other APIs
tensions, but the designers of Jetpack have chosen to focus
Tabs 20
first on usability and generativity [29].
Bookmarks 2
Internet Explorer has a combined plug-in and extension
Plugin 2
system known as Browser Helper Object (BHO) modules.
For example, the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer is im-
Figure 10. Privilege use breakdown of popular plemented as a BHO. These extensions are written in native
Google Chrome extensions. code and have direct access to the win32 API. If a BHO
has a vulnerability (such as a buffer overflow), a malicious
web site can issue arbitrary win32 API calls by exploiting
the vulnerability. Recent versions of Internet Explorer run
Performance. Separating extensions into components these BHOs in “protected mode,” [26] reducing their priv-
could potentially add overhead to inter-component opera- ileges. However, a compromised BHO still has full access
tions. For example, if a content script needs to use privi- to web pages (including passwords and cookie) and read
leges held by the extension core, the content script has to access to the file system.
send a message to the core process instead of simply calling One recent paper [25] considers limiting the privileges
a function in its own address space. Similarly, DOM access of Firefox extensions. They propose a mechanism for sand-
from content scripts requires crossing from the extension’s boxing extensions by intercepting various events in the
isolated world to the page’s world, incurring an additional XPCOM object marshaling layer, incurring a performance
hash table lookup on some execution paths. overhead of 19% for a particular policy. Unlike our work,
To evaluate the run-time overhead of inter-process com- this paper focuses entirely on mechanism, and the authors
munication, we measured the round-trip latency for send- do not determine which policies their mechanism ought to
ing a message from a content script to the extension core in enforce. We could imagine reducing the privileges of Fire-
Google Chrome 4.0.249.22 on Mac OS X. We observe an fox extensions by using this mechanism to restrict extension
average round-trip latency of 0.8 ms (n = 100, σ = 0.0079 behavior at the escalation points we identify in Section 3.2.
ms), where each trial is the average of 1000 inter-process A number of papers [15, 35, 7, 16, 31] consider the prob-
round-trips. Of course, an extension incurs this added la- lem of running native plug-in code securely using fault iso-
tency only for operations that require coordination between lation and system call interposition. These techniques fo-
multiple components. For example, an extension that adds cus on isolating untrusted native code, whereas we focus
additional EXIF metadata to Flickr [28] incurs this overhead on code written in JavaScript, letting us use the standard
once per page load to issue a cross-origin XMLHttpRe- same-origin JavaScript sandbox. We are chiefly concerned
quest, increasing the load time by an unnoticeable 0.8 ms. with the privileges afforded to extensions via explicit APIs,
To evaluate the run-time overhead of the isolated words a topic that has not been studied in much detail. Their
mechanism, we ran a DOM core performance bench- techniques for plug-in confinement are complimentary to
mark [20] in Chromium 4.0.266.0 on Mac OS X. The our work and could be used to monitor native binaries dis-
benchmark measures the total speed of a set of append, tributed with extensions.
prepend, insert, index, and remove DOM operations. In the
Our work is also related to mashups, which are web
main world, the benchmark required an average of 231 ms
pages that result from sophisticated communication and
(n = 100, σ = 5.46 ms) to complete. When run in an
data sharing between multiple parties (e.g., plotting data
isolated world, the benchmark took an average of 309 ms
from one source on a map from another source). In a
(n = 100, σ = 6.33 ms). The use of isolated worlds adds
sense, a browser is a mashup combining extension code
33.3% to DOM access time, which we expect would be a
and web content into a personalized browsing experience.
small fraction of overall run and load time.
Our design draws inspiration from MashupOS [32] and
OMash [14], albeit taking into account subsequent attacks
and design recommendations [10]. In addition, the isolated Acknowledgments
worlds heap-segregation mechanism is an outgrowth of the
perspective expressed in [12]. Finally, placing the exten- We would like to thank Nick Baum, Erik Kay, Collin
sion’s public-key in the URL was suggested in [21] to rem- Jackson, Matt Perry, Dawn Song, David Wagner, and the
edy a vulnerability in Firefox’s signed JAR mechanism. Google Chrome Team. This work is partially supported
Browser extensions are also analogous to kernel mod- by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under MURI
ules in operating systems. Buggy kernel modules have long Grant No. 22178970-4170 and the National Science Foun-
been a major cause of failures and security vulnerabilities dation TRUST Grant No. CCF-0424422.
in operating systems. Nooks [30] and SafeDrive [36] em-
ploy memory access confinement to limit the privileges of
kernel modules. Although the two problems are analogous, References
the techniques used are quite different.
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