Well, this got a bunch of upvotes and a bunch of downvotes. Quite honestly, I'm not complaining about the scoring, but I'd like to understand the thinking here. Is it just "I want the shiny new API, stop saying these unpleasant things?"
I am not a web developer; I just live in their world. And it's clear that we'll get WebGL and a bunch of other things like it anyhow, since there is tremendous pressure to make web apps more like local apps.
Here are some well-known things about graphics drivers - I do have some knowledge in this domain, but honestly, these are things that anyone can find out himself:
-- They've become quite complex. With the rise of GPGPU, the graphics driver now includes a C compiler, a virtual machine (or several specialized virtual machines), debug hooks, and tons of other code.
-- The driver development teams are not focused on security. Their API is meant to be used by a local application, and if you're running an executable, especially one that can talk to the driver for your screen, the executable can already do whatever it wants.
-- There has not been any sort of a scramble among video driver teams to prepare for WebGL. It's not in the job description of their product to provide a sandbox for malicious code. The graphics driver is not a JVM. And I am very unconvinced by the proposed measures for WebGL security in the browser, which include such things as blacklisting a driver once a vuln is reported. What about before it's reported?
-- If you're using virtualization for security, I seriously recommend not using the "accelerated 3D" option. I don't know of published exploits, and the virtualization does make it somewhat difficult for a malware writer, but you are NOT getting any sort of a hardware-enforced guarantee the moment you enable the passing of commands to GPU. Now, VMWare (and others) are very aware of security issues, and are working on GPU virtualization with that in mind. But it's still not the same guarantee.
My bottom line is that I would seriously prefer for WebGL not to become popular, until a serious standard for sandboxed virtual GPUs is worked out. But it seems some people just can't wait.
> Well, this got a bunch of upvotes and a bunch of downvotes. Quite honestly, I'm not complaining about the scoring, but I'd like to understand the thinking here. Is it just "I want the shiny new API, stop saying these unpleasant things?"
It's that this article is from a Google employee, and so you're going to get the Google defenders coming out of the woodwork.
You think that's it? OK then, let me state for the record that I'm not on Microsoft's or Google's or anyone else's side in this matter. It's not like Microsoft is making the web safe for us (ActiveX, anyone?). I was making a purely technical point. I have tons of my info online or on my computer, and I'm worried about it.
I am not a web developer; I just live in their world. And it's clear that we'll get WebGL and a bunch of other things like it anyhow, since there is tremendous pressure to make web apps more like local apps.
Here are some well-known things about graphics drivers - I do have some knowledge in this domain, but honestly, these are things that anyone can find out himself:
-- They've become quite complex. With the rise of GPGPU, the graphics driver now includes a C compiler, a virtual machine (or several specialized virtual machines), debug hooks, and tons of other code.
-- The driver development teams are not focused on security. Their API is meant to be used by a local application, and if you're running an executable, especially one that can talk to the driver for your screen, the executable can already do whatever it wants.
-- There has not been any sort of a scramble among video driver teams to prepare for WebGL. It's not in the job description of their product to provide a sandbox for malicious code. The graphics driver is not a JVM. And I am very unconvinced by the proposed measures for WebGL security in the browser, which include such things as blacklisting a driver once a vuln is reported. What about before it's reported?
-- If you're using virtualization for security, I seriously recommend not using the "accelerated 3D" option. I don't know of published exploits, and the virtualization does make it somewhat difficult for a malware writer, but you are NOT getting any sort of a hardware-enforced guarantee the moment you enable the passing of commands to GPU. Now, VMWare (and others) are very aware of security issues, and are working on GPU virtualization with that in mind. But it's still not the same guarantee.
My bottom line is that I would seriously prefer for WebGL not to become popular, until a serious standard for sandboxed virtual GPUs is worked out. But it seems some people just can't wait.