With little fanfare, an important security change has arrived on the web. Now, all major browsers (except Safari) block non-secure downloads from a secure page. Browser Version Behavior Edge 94+ Block with right-click “Keep” button Chrome 94 Block Silently Firefox Block with “Allow download” button Brave 1.30.89 Block Silently Opera 79.0.4143.72 Block Silently Safari 15Continue reading “MoarTLS: Non-Secure Download Blocking”
Author Archives: ericlaw
Accessibility (UIA) Troubleshooting
Chromium-based browsers offer a number of accessibility-related features. When you visit about:accessibility, you can see more about the state of these features (similarly, you can find the states in about:histograms/Accessibility.ModeFlag). You can enable features via the Accessibility page, or by You can also passing the command line argument –force-renderer-accessibility into the browser. In some cases,Continue reading “Accessibility (UIA) Troubleshooting”
Practical Time Machines
Many “emergency” situations in our modern world would’ve been easy to fix had they been foreseen in advance. If only we’d known what was going to happen, the badness could’ve easily been prevented. Unfortunately, when problems are discovered only “as they happen” in production, everyone must race to minimize the damage and put out theContinue reading “Practical Time Machines”
Determining OS Platform Version
In general, you should not care what Operating System visitors are using to visit your website. If you attempt to be clever, you will often get it wrong and cause problems that are an annoyance for users and a hassle for me to debug. So avoid trying to be nosy/clever if at all possible. ThatContinue reading “Determining OS Platform Version”
Inspecting Certificates in Edge
Curious about how to see a website’s HTTPS certificate in Microsoft Edge? You’ve got two options: A companion post to 2017’s post Inspecting Certificates in Chrome.
Leaky Abstractions
In the late 1990s, the Windows Shell and Internet Explorer teams introduced a bunch of brilliant and intricate designs that allowed extension of the shell and the browser to handle scenarios beyond what those built by Microsoft itself. For instance, Internet Explorer supported the notion of pluggable protocols (“What if some protocol, say, FTPS, becomesContinue reading “Leaky Abstractions”
Offline NetLog Viewing
A while back, I explained how you can use Telerik Fiddler or the Catapult NetLog Viewer to analyze a network log captured from Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, or another Chromium or Electron-based application. While Fiddler is a native app that runs locally, the Catapult NetLog Viewer is a JavaScript application that runs in your browser.Continue reading “Offline NetLog Viewing”
Download Blocking by File Type
I’ve previously spoken about the magic of the File Type Policies component — a mechanism that allows files to be classified by their level of “dangerousness”, such that harmless files (e.g. .txt files) can be downloaded freely, whilst potentially-dangerous files (e.g. .dll files) are subjected to a higher degree of vetting and a more security-consciousContinue reading “Download Blocking by File Type”
Per-Site Permissions in Edge
Last year, I wrote about how the new Microsoft Edge browser mostly ignores Security Zones (except in very rare circumstances) to configure security and permissions decisions. Instead, in Chromium per-site permissions are controlled by settings and policies expressed using a simple syntax with limited wildcarding support. Settings Page’s Site Permissions and Group Policy Internet ExplorerContinue reading “Per-Site Permissions in Edge”
Specifying Per-Site Policy with Chromium’s URL Filter Format
Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge make very limited use of Windows Security Zones. Instead, most permissions and features that offer administrators per-site configuration via policy rely on lists of rules in the URL Filter Format. Filters are expressed in a syntax that is similar to other matching rules, but different enough to cause confusion. ForContinue reading “Specifying Per-Site Policy with Chromium’s URL Filter Format”
