SecurityEngineering
We build security and user sovereignty into Firefox. Through this work, we encourage and promote these values on the open web.
We focus hard on ways to improve the privacy and security of all web users, in a Mozilla way that engages the community in our design and implementation decisions. These priorities are reflected in the projects this team manages, public evangelism and participation in relevant standards bodies to maximize adoption of new privacy & security mechanisms.
The open web is powerful; the huge number of people working on web standards and software is astonishing, and the rapid advancement of new businesses and technologies online magnifies the need for advances in mechanisms that enable secure systems and users' control over their presence online.
Who is involved
Security Engineering is led by Wennie Leung. Work is divided between these main teams:
- Privacy and Security Engineering: website & browser security features (Containers, Password Manager, etc.), DOM security (CSP, SRI, Cookies, Mixed Content Blocking, origin, etc), Content Blocking (Safe Browsing, Download Protection and Tracking Protection), revamp of security hooks, Tor Uplift and Sandbox Hardening.
- Communications security (Lead:JC Jones): TLS stack, communications security, WebCrypto, PSM, NSS, Error Reporting and OneCRL
- Defensive Security Engineering (Lead: Tom Ritter): implementing changes to Firefox that improve our security posture.
- Mozilla's CA Certificate Program (Program Manager: Kathleen Wilson)
To connect with us directly, you can our contact details on Mozillians.
How We Work
The Security Engineering team works publicly like other Mozilla engineering teams. Continuously, we are focused on four top-level activities:
- Implement and Deploy
- Consult on Architecture and Design
- Research new Ideas
- Evangelize what we do
For more details, check out our strategy.
What we work on
The core security guarantee of the web is that it’s safe to browse. You can run a web browser and connect to any web server on the planet, and whatever that server sends you, it won’t be able to harm you.
Delivering on this promise requires many layers of assurance:
- That the browser itself is safe to run -- that no malicious code has been introduced, and that we find and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
- That the browser is protecting web content as it’s delivered over the network.
- That that web content is forced to play by our rules, including assuring that privacy-sensitive actions that web pages take are gated on a user’s permission.
- That we’re providing a user experience that helps people understand the risks and how they can stay safe.
For details of our projects in these four areas, see the security roadmap.
How to participate
Discuss: We hang out on #security and #contentsecurity on irc.mozilla.org, and our primary mailing list is mozilla.dev.security.
Follow our work: To see our current progress against features please see the Mozilla Security Blog.
Contribute: Wanna pitch in, maybe do a project? Check out the good first bugs list and if one interests you, contact us!
Experimental Things
We have a few feature proposals for things we might want to add to Firefox but that aren't currently scheduled:
- Foreign Certificate Warning
- Master Password in the Password Manager
- Automatic Private Browsing Upgrades
Security Bugs
If you've found a security bug please see http://www.mozilla.org/security/#For_Developers
