Firefox3.1/Web Workers Security Review

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Overview

Web workers allow content javascript to take advantage of multicore CPUs and offload expensive processing tasks to background threads.

Current working spec: whatwg

Major tracking bug: bug 450448

Security and Privacy

  • Workers execute in a tightly controlled sandbox.
    • No access to Components or other global JS components.
    • Only basic JS (Math, Date, etc.), timeouts, XHR, and importScripts.
  • No pref dependencies yet, maybe will provide one to customize the number of OS threads allowed.
  • Script loading is subject to the same restrictions as on the main thread (content policies, same origin restrictions, etc.).
  • XHR uses the same code as the main thread.

Exported APIs

Current IDL: nsIDOMThreads.idl

Module interactions

  • Necko
  • DOM
  • Content
  • XPCOM
  • XPConnect

Data

  • JS is the only data parsed here.

Reliability

  • Users control the execution of background workers by navigating away from or back to the hosting page.

Configuration

  • Users cannot currently modify the behavior of workers except by normal mechanisms to modify JS execution, content policies, etc.
  • No build configuration options.
  • Need to tune the number of OS threads allowed per app instance.
  • No hidden maintenance requirements.

Relationships to other projects

  • Gears - they're very involved with the spec work so hopefully gears API will converge.

Review comments

  • Need to clear JS regexp statics from the context when global objects are swapped.
  • Crashtest infinite recursion
  • Assertions in the stub security manager
  • worker thread sandbox uses a custom security manager, not CAPS
  • when a page navigates what happens to worker threads?
    • they are suspended in the bfcache, messages get queued
    • if no cache, or evicted, they are destroyed with the page
  • JS contexts are single-threaded, worker threads share them. Current max 3 actual threads.
  • chrome (extensions) can use worker threads
  • haven't implemented location yet
  • don't plan to implement localStorage or openDatabase for now.
  • not implementing shared workers