Abstract-A typical Web 2.0 application usually includes JavaScript from various sources with different trust. It is critical to properly regulate JavaScript's access to web application resources. Unfortunately, existing protection mechanisms in web browsers do not provide enough granularity in JavaScript access control. Specifically, existing solutions partially mitigate this sort of threat by only providing access control for certain types of JavaScript objects, or by unnecessarily restricting the functionality of untrusted JavaScript. In this paper, we systematically analyze the complete access control requirements in a web browser's JavaScript environment and identify the fundamental lack of fine-grained JavaScript access control mechanisms in modern web browsers. As our solution, we propose a reference monitor called JCShadow that enables fine-grained access control in JavaScript contexts without unnecessarily restricting the functionality of JavaScript. We have developed a proof-of-concept prototype in the Mozilla Firefox browser and the evaluation with real-world attacks indicates that JCShadow effectively prevents such attacks with low performance overhead.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.