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Firefox with uBlock Origin. It’s astonishing how many exploits uBO stops before they ever reach your browser engine. It’s the antivirus of the 2020s.


Brave would be a much better option if you want security and good adblocking.


Brave is just a wrapper on top of Chromium. Just like the many other “browsers” you can think of recommending.


I suggest Zen browser (fork of FF), it feels closer to chrome.


I hear about Zen. Random q:

It can’t trick Canva into letting you use the color picker, or otherwise enable it, can it - if someone happens to know?

(What a dumb feature to be locked to the Googlesphere.)


I don’t know honestly.


What does it mean "closer to chrome"?


I should have been more specific. I meant the aesthetics. Zen mimics Arc Browser with vertical tabs and a hidden sidebar to maximize screen space.


In a good way?


Yes, in my opinion. I know a couple of people who actually jumped from Chrome to Zen because of it. In their mind, Firefox is something from the past and rough around the edges. Zen gave new attraction to FF. I am all for any opportunity to disrupt the Chrome monopoly we currently have.


uBlock Origin won't help with this kind of targeted exploit, and Firefox has a much worse security track record.


It absolutely does help, because it blocks hundreds of thousands of shady origins.


That blocks all sorts of abuse, but a targeted exploit would be delivered on a clean domain.


uBO stops exploits? Source?


malvertising is really a method of delivering exploits, but there is no reason to think its relavent to this situation.

For non technical users, scam adverts are probably the biggest threat.

So i agree ubo is an important security technology, but its probably irrelavent to the topic at hand.


It blocks many shady domains, which stops many exploits before they ever reach your browser.


[flagged]

The idea here is that uBlock filters the domains that may serve the malware in the first place. It basically works the same as a DNS filter.


You should be using a DNS filter ideally so it never hits the device in the first place. Adding an extension only increases browser attack surface.


Which you can also easily do with uBlock Origin Lite in Chrome/Chromium.


People pretend like uBoL doesn’t work at all


I'm willing to believe that stock chrome has a better record than stock Firefox, but

> and on top of it you’re recommending an extension as a security measure

... Yes? Why can a browser extension not be a security measure/improvement?


Because extensions especially MV2 ones only increase attack surface.


No, they don't only increase attack surface. In particular, uBo reduces attack surface a lot more than it increases it.


The only scenario in which one could possibly argue this is if the option is using MV3 uBlock Origin Lite in basic mode, where the browser handles the content blocking just reading rules from uBoL.

uBO MV2 and MV3 in any of the higher two modes objectively add more attack surface when the alternative is basic uBoL + DNS level filtering which is the most secure combination second to just DNS-only filtering.

And ultimately ad blocking is only badness enumeration which is a poor security measure to rely on, especially when the main application (Firefox) lacks proper security measures versus Chromium. It’s like the NVIDIA owners coming up with 3,000 different cable solutions to the burning connectors when its a problem with the card itself.




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