Chromium Browser for Snapdragon

Defending the User

Protecting browser users Security and Privacy is the fundamental mission of Qualcomm’s “Smart Protect - Web” umbrella of technologies. With that mission in mind, Qualcomm has built an array of technologies to help users safely and privately navigate the world wide web. A few of the key things “Smart Protect - Web” enables are:

WebRefiner

WebRefiner aims to improve the user experience by providing users with a tool to filter out unwanted content from websites. The rise and proliferation of websites using the freemium model to support serving content, has resulted in the opening of numerous avenues for attackers to compromise the security and privacy of website users. Freemium, even though the name implies otherwise, is not really free. Typically, freemium involves the main website, whose content a user is interested in consuming, facilitating an unrelated third-party website to either serve external content (often unrelated to the main website’s content) and / or allowing this third-party to track the user without their explicit consent. The primary website the user is interested in, has no control over the behavior of this third-party website, nor does the primary website curate the content / advertisements these third parties serve. These third-parties then become the vehicles for both security compromises and privacy intrusions. Through WebRefiner , “Smart Protect - Web” aims to provide the user with the necessary tools to fend off such attacks and compromises. WebRefiner includes support for the syntax of EasyList, Hosts list and iOS Content list.

WebDefender

WebDefender enhances the anti-tracking technology originally developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the browser extension Privacy Badger. Implemented natively within “Smart Protect - Web”, WebDefender uses machine intelligence to detect third-party websites who are exhibiting tracking behavior and blocks them.

XSSDefender (Requires M53)

Every day users are exposed to a variety of attacks on the web. Phishing, keylogging, clickjacking, cookie stealing, downloading unwanted software, etc.. are just a few of them. Attackers typically utilize javascript and cross site scripting (XSS) to deliver and execute these types of attacks from within the client browser. XSS Defender, built into Qualcomm’s “Smart Protect - Web” shield, uses machine learning to detect when such an attack is in progress, warns the user about the situation and blocks the attack.

Google Safe-Browsing (Requires M50)

Safe-Browsing, is a Google service that protects users by stopping them from visiting known phishing, malware or hacked websites. Access to Google Safe-Browsing is built into Qualcomm’s “Smart Protect - Web” shield. The Safe-Browsing service maintains a blacklist of known bad sites, and uses it to keep the user safe while browsing the internet.

Secure-Connect (Requires M53)

Modern browsers include support for encrypting the users connection to websites that have support for such connections via HTTPS. Such encrypted connections maintin the security and privacy of the requests and content that is exchanged between the user and the website. They prevent man-in-the-middle style attacks from compromising the users security as well as maintain the users privacy by preventing anyone from eavesdropping on the connection (HTTP connections are in plain text). Majority of the top websites now have support for HTTPS, but not all of them default to using this connection mechanism. Based off technology developed by the EFF for another browser extension known as HTTPS-Everywhere, “Smart Protect - Web” includes support for defaulting to secured connections without explicitly requiring user intervention.