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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Didn't some get exploited early on because electron made it trivial to load third party websites without any kind of XSS protection?
Just wanted to write the same comment!
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...
More like 4 weeks than 2.
https://chromestatus.com/roadmap
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
> 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?
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.
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.
Please don’t use green/red schemes, it’s the most common form of colorblindness and it’s especially bad with such pale shades.
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.
This website, while cool data, is just awful for me who is very red/green colorblind. Unusable.
It has text supporting the color, so it's fine.
Some of the text is undereadable on the background.
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?
White with black text for success and black with white text for failure. People would figure it out.
So as I said instead of confusing a minority of people, we confuse everyone instead?
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.
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...
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.
I use Firefox, btw
Firefox has its own forks, by the way: GNU IceWeasel → IceCat, LibreWolf etc.
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)
Please add Helium
and Ungoogled Chromium
Helium rocks!
qutebrowser would be nice too.
I second this motion.
I third this motion.
Shouldn't it also show the version number of the browser the user is currently on?
Which user?
The one visiting the website (tfa website)
Why? What does tfa mean? I'm visiting it on Firefox.
TFA is: The Fantastic Article. The top thing that was posted.
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.
Could add the Meta Quest browser
Vivaldi does minor releases as needed for security and bugs, so saying 1 major version behind is a bit coarse.
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.
What fingerprinting? What does this have to do with anything?