PROTECTION AND COMMUNICATION ABSTRACTIONS FOR WEB BROWSERS

• US 20080313648A1
• Filed: 06/14/2007
• Published: 12/18/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Wang, Jiahe Helen, Howell, Jonathan Ryan, Xu, Zhenbin, Fan, Xiaofeng, Jackson, Collin Edward
• Granted Patent: US 10,019,570 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/315
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45587 Isolation or security of virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/53 by executing in a restricted environment, e.g. sandbox or secure virtual machine
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2119 Authenticating web pages, e.g. with suspicious links
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1441 Countermeasures against malicious traffic countermeasures against attacks on cryptographic mechanisms H04L9/002

Abstract

Systems and methodologies for accessing resources associated with a Web-based application in accordance with one or more embodiments disclosed herein may include a browser that obtains at least first resources from a first domain and second resources from a second domain and a resource management component that facilitates controlled communication between the first resources and the second resources and prevents the first resources and the second resources from accessing other resources that the first resources and the second resources are not permitted to access. The resource management component may be further operable to contain restricted services in a sandbox containment structure and/or to isolate access-controlled resources in a service instance. In addition, the resource management component may be operable to facilitate the flexible display of resources from disparate domains and/or controlled communication therebetween.

Claims

1. A system for accessing Web-based resources, comprising:

a browser that obtains at least first resources from a first domain and second resources from a second domain; and

a resource management component that facilitates controlled communication between the first resources and the second resources and containment of at least one of the first resources and the second resources such that the first resources and the second resources are prevented from accessing other resources that the first resources and the second resources are not permitted to access.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein at least the first resources obtained from the first domain originate from a content provider and include restricted services that the content provider does not trust to access other resources from the first domain.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the content provider labels the restricted services as untrusted.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the content provider assigns a MIME type to the restricted services that identifies the restricted services as untrusted.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the resource management component comprises a resource containment component that facilitates access to the restricted services subject to containment thereof.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the resource containment component uses a sandbox to contain the restricted services such that other resources obtained by the browser can utilize the restricted services but the restricted services cannot access the other resources.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least the first resources include untrusted user input, and the resource management component contains the untrusted user input in a sandbox to prevent a cross-site scripting attack.

8. The system of claim 2, wherein the first resources include user input and the user input is identified as a restricted service to prevent a cross-site scripting attack.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein at least the first resources obtained from the first domain originate from a content provider and include one or more access-controlled services to which the content provider controls access according to an access control scheme.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the resource management component comprises an access control component that creates a service instance for the access-controlled services, the service instance isolates the access-controlled services from other resources obtained by the browser, enables use of the access-controlled services according to the access control scheme, and allows controlled communication between the access-controlled services and the other resources obtained by the browser.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the access control component facilitates the display of the access-controlled services and the other resources obtained by the browser in a common window area of display, the access-controlled services and the other resources obtained by the browser utilize the controlled communication allowed by the access control component to dynamically adjust relative portions of the window area of display allocated for the respective resources.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the browser comprises a rendering engine that renders content corresponding to one or more of the first resources and the second resources and one or more script engines that process scripts corresponding to one or more of the first resources and the second resources, and the resource management component comprises a script engine proxy that interposes between the rendering engine and the script engines and implements one or more browser abstractions that allow the browser to control communication and access for the first resources and the second resources.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the resource management component further comprises a MIME filter that receives commands corresponding to the browser abstractions implemented by the script engine proxy and generates transformed commands that can be implemented by the rendering engine.

14. A method of providing enhanced security and communication capability for a Web-based application, comprising:

obtaining first resources from a first domain corresponding to the Web-based application;

obtaining second resources from a second domain corresponding to the Web-based application; and

containing at least a subset of the first resources and the second resources to provide enhanced security and to facilitate controlled communication between the first resources and the second resources.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the obtaining second resources includes obtaining access-controlled resources from the second domain and the containing includes generating a service instance and isolating the access-controlled resources in the service instance.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

displaying the first resources and the access-controlled resources in a common window area of display; and

dynamically adjusting the display of the first resources and the access-controlled resources at least in part by conducting controlled communication between the first resources and the access-controlled resources.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein the obtaining second resources includes obtaining restricted resources from the second domain and the containing includes containing the restricted resources in a sandbox structure.

18. The method of claim 14, further comprising at least one of conducting controlled communication between the first resources and the second resources and conducting controlled communication between the first resources and the second domain.

19. The method of claim 14 implemented as computer-executable instructions stored on a computer-readable medium.

20. A system that facilitates enhanced security and communication capability for a Web-based application, comprising:

means for obtaining first resources from a first domain;

means for obtaining second resources from a second domain;

means for controlling the access of the first resources and the second resources to each other and to other resources from the first domain or the second domain.