Microsoft’s New Website "Your Browser Matters" Test’s Your Browser’s Security

Your Browser Matters: Microsoft’s new website was created to show you how your browser helps keep you secure online.

Key Security Features:

Dangerous Downloads

• Does the browser help protect you from websites that are known to distribute socially engineered malware?
• Does your browser provide a distinct warning when you download an application that is of higher risk but not yet confirmed as malware?

Phishing Websites

• Does the browser have a feature that can help protect you from phishing sites?
• Does your browser help you identify the domain you’re on by distinguishing it within the URL?

Attacks on your browser

Securing Extensions

• Does the browser have the ability to restrict an extension or a plugin on a per site basis?
• Does the browser have a system for auto updating browser extensions?

Effective Sandbox

• Does the browser process utilize Windows Protected Mode or implement a similar mechanism such that browser processes cannot modify parts of the system that it doesn’t have access to?
• Does the browser extend the sandbox such that it cannot read data from parts of the system that it doesn’t have access to?
• Does the browser benefit from Windows Operating System features that protect against arbitrary data execution?
• Does the browser benefit from Windows Operating System features that randomize the memory layout to make it harder for attackers to find their target?
• Does the browser benefit from Windows Operating System features that protect against structured exception handling overwrite attacks?

Attacks on websites

• Does the browser automatically block insecure content from secure (HTTPs) pages?
• Does the browser filter out scripts on the client to help protect against XSS attacks?
• Does the browser implement content security policy that websites can use to mitigate XSS and CSRF attacks?
  Can the browser sanitize HTML to remove potentially problematic code?
• Does the browser have features that websites can take advantage of to help protect you from cross site request forgery attacks, also known as “click jacking”?

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