Disclaimer: Hi. I’m an engineer on the Edge browser now, but worked on Chrome Security for a bit over two years. I speak for no one but myself, and I share no internal or confidential information in this post. Update: The Chrome team announced upcoming changes based on user-feedback. This weekend, there were a bunchContinue reading “Chrome Sync”
Category Archives: design
The Trouble with Magic
“Magic” is great… except when it isn’t. Software Design is largely about tradeoffs, and one of the more interesting tradeoffs is between user experience and predictability. This has come up repeatedly throughout my career and in two independent contexts yesterday that I’ll describe in this post. Developer Magic I’m working on a tiny UX changeContinue reading “The Trouble with Magic”
Certified Malice
One unfortunate (albeit entirely predictable) consequence of making HTTPS certificates “fast, open, automated, and free” is that both good guys and bad guys alike will take advantage of the offer and obtain HTTPS certificates for their websites. Today’s bad guys can easily turn a run-of-the-mill phishing spoof: …into a somewhat more convincing version, by obtainingContinue reading “Certified Malice”
The Line of Death
When building applications that display untrusted content, security designers have a major problem— if an attacker has full control of a block of pixels, he can make those pixels look like anything he wants, including the UI of the application itself. He can then induce the user to undertake an unsafe action, and a userContinue reading “The Line of Death”
Security UI in Chrome
The combined address box and search bar at the top of the Chrome window is called the omnibox. The icon and optional verbose state text adjacent to that icon are collectively known as the Security Chip: The security chip can render in a number of states, depending on the status of the page: Secure –Continue reading “Security UI in Chrome”
Do Not Lie to Users
Multiple people working on Outlook.com thought this was a reasonable design. After a user deletes an email, then manually goes into the Deleted Items folder, then clicks Delete again, then acknowledges that they wish to Permanently Delete the deleted item: … the item is still not deleted. You can “Recover deleted items” from your Deleted items folder:Continue reading “Do Not Lie to Users”
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