LibreWolf is a great privacy oriented Browser for desktop. But there is no version for android or IOS . There are some like mull but they have their own problems. Mobile phones stay with us most of the day. So we need extra privacy for it.
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This always gets downvoted, because it’s a painful truth, but Chromium on Android is significantly more secure than Firefox.
There is a reason why the default included browser on GrapheneOS, Vanadium, is a Chromium fork.
So I’m sorry, until Firefox on Android catches up to Chromium, another Firefox fork isn’t going to make the impact on the ecosystem that you think it is.
I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t use Firefox forks on Android, I’m saying do so being aware of their limitations relative to Chromium forks, such as Cromite, or Mulch, the latter being the same dev as Mull. That same dev also has a lengthy write-up going over the technical details of why Chromium is more secure than Firefox on Android.
This has nothing to do with desktop browser engines, this is specifically and exclusively in regards to Android browsers
Interesting. What security risks are you talking about exactly? Do you have a link?
I know Chromium is faster and more responsive on Android but I haven’t read much about security differences yet. With Chromium being pre-installed and signed by the OS vendor, I always assumed the risk of exploiting the Chromium process was higher instead of lower.
I’m not sure what threat model you’re protecting yourself from if the Android sandbox isn’t good enough for either to be honest, but I suppose there’s risk in hijacking the browser too.
See the replies below regarding per-site process isolation.
I see. I don’t think missing that is enough of a problem for me to switch browsers, it is rather unfortunate that it’s still missing on Android.
It means that one malicious site can compromise your entire phone.
No it doesn’t? It means that a malicious site that can take over a browser process can also take over connections/accounts on websites that share the same browser process by bypassing mechanisms such as CORS.
This isolation mode is also pretty effective against things like side channel attacks, though real mitigations of those bugs require kernel/microcode updates.
To take over your phone, you need at least a sandbox escape exploit to break out of the browser app space, a privilege escalation exploit to get past selinux and other such protections, and even then the damage you can do is quite limited unless you’ve gained root access. Site isolation exploits can be used as the first step in a chain of exploits, but it’s not a very important part when it comes to preventing privileged RCE.
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android.
https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
That sounds like the exposed attack surface is a lot more than just whatever sites are running under your Firefox process.
But what do I know, I’m not a developer of security-hardened Android forks, so I just have to pick which randos on the internet I choose to believe. When the developers of DivestOS and GrapheneOS both have lengthy write-ups on why chromium base browsers are significantly more secure, I’m going to believe them because I don’t have the low level technical knowledge to refute what they’re saying.
If a third part web browser “bypasses or cripples” OS sandboxing, then any app can. Seems like Graphene’s hardening isn’t very good for third party apps in that case.
Firefox doesn’t use Android’s API for sandboxing processes from each other, but that sandboxing isn’t what’s protecting your phone from getting taken over. There are many layers of security present within Android and process isolation for web content is just one of them.
I’m sure Graphene’s fork of Chrome is more secure than Firefox (especially with JIT turned off) but that doesn’t mean running Firefox presents any risk.
Android’s design is such that I should be able to install a random app and see no adverse effects other than battery drain/high network load without clicking through dozens of security prompts. If that’s not the case, there’s a vulnerability in the Android layer that needs patching, such as the Qualcomm vulnerability that was released recently.
With open security holes like that, not even Chrome’s site isolation is going to protect you
It’s because you are making extreme claims without any sources.
Pretty sure I told you where you could find more information, as well as pointing out that the default browser on Graphene is a hardened Chromium browser, not Firefox Gecko.
But okay, here, I can even do that little bit of searching for you:
what divestOS is actually saying:
While DivestOS includes a Gecko based browser for privacy reasons, Chromium based browsers have many security advantages. It is up to the user to choose their preference.
You’re wrong
Source: same as yours. My butt.
What is per-site process isolation?
Per-site process isolation is a powerful security feature that seeks to limit exposure of a malicious website/script abusing a security vulnerability. Firefox calls per-site process isolation Fission and is enabled by default on desktop. Fission is not yet enabled by default on Android, and when manually enabled it results in a severely degraded/broken experience. Furthermore Firefox on Android does not take advantage of Android’s isolatedProcess flag for completely confining application services. Standalone Chromium based browsers strictly isolate websites to their own process.
Source: The developer of Mull, Mulch, & DivestOS
Personally I would argue that allowing users to install extensions, mostly adblockers, you remove what’s probably the single most common real world vector for attackers, ads. So while chromium browsers may be more secure I would say you’re probably less likely to run into a problem with a firefox based browser with ublock origin on it, mobile or desktop.
Corrected. Firefox is less secure than Chromium-based browsers.
And if you had that in your butt the whole time, you should’ve gotten it out earlier.
It’s not LibreWolf, but how about IceRaven?
https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browserHas been my goto FireFox fork for Android for years.
It still has telemetry. Devs also mentioned it in the github repo
ok but like… telemetry is not automatically bad. a vast majority of users never report bugs in software, and are trained to just click through popups. this means the bugs don’t get fixed, and the crash reports don’t get sent.
scrutinizing what actually gets sent from your browser is how you keep yourself safe, blocking all telemetry is how you get unpatched security holes.
But not everyone likes it. And people who use these foeked versions instead of the play store version are smart enough to do bug reports
they are probably also smart enough to know how to toggle the telemetry off with the setting exposed by the browser.
Turning off telemetry in setting doesn’t always work. If you see dns logs you can find bunch of domains that your Browser is connecting
does that apply to iceraven? if not i don’t really see the relevance
Yep i used it for a month . it has telemetry from Mozilla. Like it inherited from it’s parent Firefox
My thing against Firefox/Librewolf is lack of security…unless it’s improved?
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.
So that leaves the choice between giving our data to Google or randos on the internet then?
or randos on the internet then?
I mean isn’t that practically everyone on the Internet that you don’t know personally? Or do you actually know the Firefox and/or Librewolf team, and audit their code as well?
If no to both…sounds like you are putting some measure of trust into “randos on the Internet.” Which is not abnormal. Trust is required at some point in most processes.
No one is saying use Google’s version of Chromium. There are hardened forks available, such as Mulch and Cromite.
Mull is a good choice for android at the moment
Oh, cool. I hadn’t heard of this one before. I use Fennec. I wonder what the main differences are. I noticed Mull mentions fennec in their F-droid page:
It [Mull] is compiled from source and proprietary blobs are removed using scripts by Relan from [https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuild here].
It seems like Mull is more privacy focused?
I just swapped to mull today. Fennec is only on fdroid or build it yourself. Fdroid updates take a week for official repo. Mull can get faster updates through DivestOS repo. Firefox just had a huge 0day and fennec is currently vulnerable.
Ahh, cool! Good to know. I just checked that 0day, and they’re both JS exploits (which I imagine most probably are), so NoScript will probably protect me unless some of my trusted domains get compromised. It’s not ideal, but it’s within my comfort tolerance.
If I’m not mistaken, Fennec is deprecated.
this is a fenix softfork named “Fennec F-Droid”, not the pre-fenix firefox <=68 based fennec browser you’re thinking of.
True. For now I got a combo of Firefox and Firefox focus. Set focus as default browser, and if you do need cookies, copy the link.
I recommend a combo of Mull and Mulch or Cromite instead. Configure one of them to delete cookies and history on exit. Use URLCheck as your default browser. Then you can see the actual link when you click on one, you can remove tracking parameters, and then choose which browser to open it in.
The problem is that they both have telemetry.
Firefox Klar has telemetry disabled to comply with stricter German regulation
Fennec, maybe?
Just to mention, Fennec’s F-droid page does list the following as an anti-feature:
This app tracks and reports your activity
Connects to various Mozilla services that can track users.It does say that telemetry has been removed, but that it still connects to services (like Firefox Sync, for example) which could still potentially be used to track you.
That’s not a dealbreaker for me personally, but if it bothers anyone else, it seems like Mull might be the more privacy conscious choice, at the cost of some convenience features.
Surprisingly, I thought about the same thing a few days ago … but we have mull browser
Soo, what “own problems” does mull have? I mean, pretty much fennec with some tor patches
Like today i tested Firefox nightly (to see new changes on official Firefox). After changing bunch of setting and dns i compared it with mull. Somehow mull was slow and it was taking longer to load the same page. ( good thing is mull has no telemetry)
Mull might feel slow because of the resist fingerprinting locks the refresh at 60hz and if your device goes higher (90/120) then it won’t take full advantage of the screen.
android already has fennec and mull though
