97 Things Every Information Security Professional Should Know

Chapter 61. Balancing the Risk and Productivity of Browser Extensions

Mike Mackintosh

With application accessibility steadily shifting from native desktop applications to the web and the rise of software as a service (SaaS), companies began to see an increase in productivity. This “access anywhere” model removes the need for heavy desktop applications to be installed locally and instead allows visitors to access the data they needed from lightweight web browsers. This approach to application development allows teams to focus on a single, streamlined product offering via the web, which usually correlates to quicker release cycles and improved feature deployment.

Browser extensions are most commonly created by developers to extend the intended functionality of a visited web page. For example, if a web browser has a search box, one extension might extend this element to an omnisearch, allowing the search box to be queried from the URL bar. Alternatively, another extension might replace all the images on a web page with your favorite celebrity. Some of the more productivity-focused extensions have a tendency to take information from an external API and display it inline with the rest of the web page contents, allowing you to view data in a more convenient manner. There has even been a trend for extensions to take advantage of reading all the contents of text boxes, formatting it and ...