butz3 days ago
I would like to see all "desktop" applications that use Electron listed and how big of a Chromium drift is there, especially how many applications are shipping runtimes with unfixed vulnerabilities.
waitwhatwhoa3 days ago
We did a study of this a few years ago[1] and the code for the instrumentation is available on github[2], the data is dated but you can see a cross section of popular apps and how far behind they were lagging over a 3 year period on page 11 of the pdf. Re: child comment, our main concern in this research was patched vulnerabilities persisting in electron apps and how damaging that could be. Details in the paper :)
1. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/usenixsecurity24-ali.pdf 2. https://github.com/masood/inspectron
KetoManx642 days ago
Study URL leads to a dead page
captn3m03 days ago
I've been working on this over the years. WIP is here: https://github.com/captn3m0/electron-survey, and it doesn't look good.
I keep getting distracted by side-quests. The last one was building an Electron Zoo, and the current one is doing accurate SBOMs for each electron version.
nicoburns3 days ago
I imagine that looks pretty bad. On the other hand, Electron apps often aren't running untrusted code, which makes it quite a bit harder to exploit.
nolist_policy3 days ago
Yep. JavaScript VM breakout, Sandbox breakout and spectre/meltdown side channel leaks are all tracked as vulnerabilities towards Electron while ordinary apps don't even have such security features.
no-name-here2 days ago
I guess an elephant-sized exception to this are the popular code editors that support extensions? Or perhaps such editors’ extensions typically aren’t constrained at all anyway.
Filligree2 days ago
The last one. It would make sense to have a sandbox system, but they don’t.
josefx3 days ago
Didn't some get exploited early on because electron made it trivial to load third party websites without any kind of XSS protection?
stingraycharles3 days ago
Isn’t the threat model for these desktop apps entirely different?
panzi3 days ago
Just wanted to write the same comment!
dataflow3 days ago
> Why does Chromium version lag matter?
> users are exposed to known, already-patched security vulnerabilities
Then why only focus on major versions? Don't minor versions/revisions have security fixes?
xeeeeeeeeeeenu3 days ago
Yes and also stable isn't the only maintained branch of Chromium, there's also extended stable (currently 146.x). LTS exists too (144.x), but I believe it's meant only for ChromeOS.
crashingintoyou2 days ago
The Vivaldi build I have locally explicitly mentions "Extended Stable channel (may also include additional security patches)" on its "About" page.
uxjw2 days ago
The most recent updates says it includes the 147 security fixes too "[Chromium] Update to 146.0.7680.218 ESR (includes security fixes from 147.0.7727.137/138)" https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/minor-update-eight-7-9/
port112 days ago
The website does seem fairly misleading, if you and GP are correct.
superjan3 days ago
In a perfect world, there would be a stable version of chrome, that would get fixes, but would crucially not get the new features that introduce new vulnerabilities. Not a fun job, I know, but with today’s coding agents it wouldn’t even be an unreasonable ask.
yawndex3 days ago
In defense of Vivaldi, it is actually up to date, just on the Extended Stable cycle: https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/releases?platform=Mac
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/main/do...
quantumleaper3 days ago
Cool idea, but without longer-term tracking of how long each browser lags for each Chromium release, it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions. It's also clear that in the case of major vulnerabilities, vendors would fast-track adoption of the patch.
I would definitely include the fact that "major" versions of Chromium are released every 2 weeks. For instance, Vivaldi is on version 146.0.7680.218 that released this Tuesday [1], only 5 days ago.
[1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/f97d14f8a0a...
dopa423653 days ago
More like 4 weeks than 2.
quantumleaper3 days ago
You are right, I misremembered this announcement [1]. They are switching from a 4-week to a 2-week release schedule this September.
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-two-week-release
pimlottc3 days ago
Please don’t use green/red schemes, it’s the most common form of colorblindness and it’s especially bad with such pale shades.
sgtlaggy3 days ago
On the topic of accessibility, the contrast of the text in the "up to date" bubbles is very low. I can barely see the yellow one, let alone read it without significant eye strain.
Firefox's dev tools have an Accessibility tab where you can see warnings about low contrast and simulate different forms of color blindness.
richwater3 days ago
This website, while cool data, is just awful for me who is very red/green colorblind. Unusable.
skaulop3 days ago
Sorry about that! I've fixed the colors and contrast now.
richwater2 days ago
thanks :)
xandrius3 days ago
It has text supporting the color, so it's fine.
richwater3 days ago
Some of the text is undereadable on the background.
shooly3 days ago
Red/green is the most common way to show bad/good, error/success, etc.
Using any other color scheme would just confuse everyone instead of only colorblind people... how would that be any better?
magpi33 days ago
White with black text for success and black with white text for failure. People would figure it out.
shooly3 days ago
So as I said instead of confusing a minority of people, we confuse everyone instead?
magpi33 days ago
There are always creative ways to present data. Dismissing the needs of a minority of people just because we don't share their visual impairment is lazy, and we can do better.
skaulop3 days ago
Thanks, fixed now.
ccouzens3 days ago
It would be good if Samsung browser were listed. It has about 10% market share of chromium browsers and is on version 136. It sticks to one version for months at a time and then jumps several versions. Going by historical data it's due for another jump soon.
UberFly3 days ago
This is somewhat useful, but I know for instance that Vivaldi is often one version behind for the sake of stability, but also will also release incremental security updates in the period before major version updates.
mm2633 days ago
Please add Helium
wswin3 days ago
and Ungoogled Chromium
dotcoma3 days ago
Helium rocks!
ece3 days ago
qutebrowser would be nice too.
Yehoshaphat3 days ago
I second this motion.
mostlyk3 days ago
I third this motion.
dizhn3 days ago
The page says old chromium means insecure. Isn't anybody backporting fixes anymore?
mistrial92 days ago
"your browser is no longer supported" is just so terribly useful, for so many ..
Retr0id3 days ago
Is "uptodown" really the canonical download page for Comet?
A point-in-time view is interesting but it's less useful than a graph over time.
Would be fun to add the version shipped in LG smart TVs (hint: it's ancient)
skaulop3 days ago
It's not but given that Perplexity doesn't have an API and blocks automated downloads, I'm not sure what else to use. Explained in the docs: https://github.com/ShivanKaul/chromium-drift/blob/main/docs/...
Retr0id3 days ago
How does comet update itself?
Edit: approximately like so:
curl -sS -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"request":{"protocol":"4.0","updater":"CometUpdater","updaterversion":"0","os":{"platform":"win","version":"10","arch":"x64"},"apps":[{"appid":"{42e10078-e377-4166-965f-c14ad958a146}","version":"0.0.0.0","updatechecks":[{}]}]}}' https://www.perplexity.ai/rest/browser/update2 | sed "s/^)]}'//" | jq -r '.response.apps[0].updatecheck.nextversion'Retr0id3 days ago
fwiw this should work the same for just about all chromium forks - protocol is documented here: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/6eb6252d5671bca378...
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darkwater3 days ago
I use Firefox, btw
ciupicri3 days ago
Firefox has its own forks, by the way: GNU IceWeasel → IceCat, LibreWolf etc.
xethos2 days ago
Fennec, for Android too. The unfortunate part is that it doesn't (by default, on F-Droid) use Firefox Beta - meaning custom extension packs can't be used
This matters for things like Redirector (www.reddit -> old.reddit), Greasemonkey (hckrnews dark theme), and (for my keyboard-equipped Android) Vimium
dismalaf2 days ago
Why is Vivaldi listed as behind when it's on the extended stable branch, which is a maintained branch?
Also, aside from that, it also perpetuates a silly idea that's popular in tech which is that security patches can't be backported or added by someone who forks software.
Like, the founder of Brave is one of the OG Mozilla guys, founder of Vivaldi did Opera, Edge is MS... These aren't dumb teams.
ece3 days ago
Vivaldi does minor releases as needed for security and bugs, so saying 1 major version behind is a bit coarse.
skaulop3 days ago
Credit to bsclifton for the idea!
jjmarr3 days ago
Shouldn't it also show the version number of the browser the user is currently on?
koolala3 days ago
Which user?
catlikesshrimp3 days ago
The one visiting the website (tfa website)
koolala3 days ago
Why? What does tfa mean? I'm visiting it on Firefox.
edoceo3 days ago
TFA is: The Fantastic Article. The top thing that was posted.
nofunsir3 days ago
What if I see a browser being "behind" as a benefit? (CVEs excepted)
shevy-java3 days ago
The problem is: we all are behind Google. Google sits in the driver seat here.
This is really, really bad ...
Edit: Ok, almost all of us. There are some non-Google browsers such as firefox, but Google dished out money to Mozilla for many years, which made real competition impossible.
TheDong3 days ago
A lot of people are stuck with safari on iOS where there's not even another browser since apple bans them.
People choose to download Chrome over firefox, to ditch their custom browser engine (microsoft & opera) in favor of chromium.
We've centralized development effort on a large open source project.
Why exactly is this really really bad?
I find the safari situation bad because I can't use various web standards, it's closed source, etc, but the chromium one doesn't bother me. I just install firefox.
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rkagerer3 days ago
Why is this list missing Supermium?
koolala3 days ago
Could add the Meta Quest browser
Fokamul3 days ago
This website, for me, it's named "List of all browsers I will never use".
Yet another reminder, lawmakers US/EU/Anywhere else, should force all browsers to actively block fingerprinting.
shooly3 days ago
What fingerprinting? What does this have to do with anything?
notenlish3 days ago
> lawmakers US/EU/Anywhere else, should force all browsers to actively block fingerprinting.
That won't happen.
crazysim3 days ago
[dead]