Ramblings of an old Doc
Published on April 30, 2014 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

 

Browsers are pretty important. You run your on line life through them, finances, etc. So, using a very secure browser is a pretty important thing, as you can imagine.

“Jeremiah Grossman and I have been publicly discussing browser security and privacy, or the lack thereof, for many years. We’ve shared the issues hundreds of times at conferences, in blog posts, on Twitter, in white papers, and in the press. As the adage goes, “If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” Browsers are no different, and the major vendors (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft) simply don’t want to make the changes necessary to offer a satisfactorily secure and private browser.

Before I go any further, it’s important to understand that it’s NOT that the browser vendors (Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft) don’t grasp or appreciate what plagues their software. They understand the issues quite well. Most of the time they actually nod their heads and even agree with us! This naturally invites the question: “why aren’t the necessary changes made to fix things and protect people?”

The answer is simple. Browser vendors (Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft) choose not to make these changes because doing so would run the risk of hurting their market share and their ability to make money. You see, offering what we believe is a reasonably secure and privacy-protecting browser requires breaking the Web, even though it’s just a little and in ways few people would notice.” – Aviator Blog

OK, so it removes ads…so does Adblock (to some extent).

Aviator has been designed for folks who like their privacy. Here’s what it does in default mode:

  • Aviator is bundled with Disconnect to remove ads and tracking
  • Aviator is always in private mode
  • Each tab is sandboxed (a sandbox provides controls to help prevent one program from making changes to others, or to your environment)
  • We strip out referring URLs across domains to protect your privacy
  • Flash and Java are click-to-play – greatly reducing the risk of drive-by downloads
  • We block access to websites behind your firewall to prevent Intranet hacking

That’s pretty good.

Aviator will run on every Windows OS from (and including) Windows 98 through W8.1, as well as Mac OSX.

You can download it here: https://www.whitehatsec.com/aviator/

One thing, though…even white listing WC in the bundled “Disconnect” won’t enable commenting in Galleries (although it will in Forums). I wouldn’t suggest running IE Tabs extension because that enables IE to render pages and might (I’m not sure) make you vulnerable to the newest security flaw in IE –I just don’t know if enabling Protected Mode is enough to guarantee your security. The folks who discovered the IE vulnerability have said that disabling Flash is enough to prevent the remote code execution malware from getting on your computer, but I don’t know enough to say, one way or another.

Source:

https://blog.whitehatsec.com/introducing-whitehat-aviator-a-safer-web-browser/


Comments (Page 2)
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on Apr 30, 2014

WhiteHat is a security firm. The browser, according to the article, has been used by their employees for some time and just released to the public.

on Apr 30, 2014

OK , I installed it and everything is working just fine. I tested things out by going to a plethera of webpages that I visit on a daily basis , and I find that they load way faster than they did in IE and I'm not experiencing the jerkiness I did with IE when trying to scroll the pages. Very happy with this browser. Thank you Doc for the post and info. I've made this my default browser and I'm very happy with my results.         -- Ace  --

on Apr 30, 2014

Set as default with WC as the home page. Cool!

on Apr 30, 2014

ElanaAhova
then how does aviator make money?

 

They use your web cam to transmit subliminal ad's to the back of your eyes while you browse??.. hmm I'm getting this odd craving for the new Flatizza's from subway.. 

on Apr 30, 2014

ElanaAhova
then how does aviator make money?

 

lol @ HG.

They make their money from their security business...not the browser. After all, the browser really belongs to Google. They modified and added to it to maximize security.

Of course, they didn't figure on HG_E "The Pizza Vulture".

on Apr 30, 2014

Oh sure laugh at me now.. but don't say I didn't warn you when there's a sudden out break of folks naming their kids Google.analytics...

on Apr 30, 2014

HG_Eliminator


Quoting ElanaAhova, reply 15then how does aviator make money?

 

They use your web cam to transmit subliminal ad's to the back of your eyes while you browse??.. hmm I'm getting this odd craving for the new Flatizza's from subway.. 

Come on5dollar, there is no way in the5dollar world they are doing that! What kind of footlonglengths do you think they'd stoop to? You'd have to beeatfresh crazy to believe thatSubway!

 

Thank you all, that will be my only attempt at humor for the day!

on Apr 30, 2014

hehe

 

on Apr 30, 2014

seriously tho. It looks interesting.. I will keep an eye on it and see how it develops..

on Apr 30, 2014

Flatizza, eh?

The only way HG would get interested is if someone else ordered and it was the size of Newark, NJ.

on Apr 30, 2014

DrJBHL

Flatizza, eh?

The only way HG would get interested is if someone else ordered and it was the size of Newark, NJ.

 

dern skippy!!!

on Apr 30, 2014

More like the size of the ice berg what broke off Antartica methinks.

on May 24, 2015

Last commit on github 5 months old, probably vulnerable to the recently discovered Logjam attack = useless browser. 

on May 24, 2015

Kamamura_CZ

Last commit on github 5 months old, probably vulnerable to the recently discovered Logjam attack = useless browser. 

Another one bites the dust.

A company called Bromium is doing hardware-based sandboxing, charging a fortune for it, and it's not so simple to implement correctly. I do not think it wise to put much stock in software-based sandboxing.

on May 25, 2015

Necro resurrection.

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