Prof. Hardekopf receives NSF grant for research on detecting malicious browser addons

Prof. Ben Hardekopf has been awarded a three-year, $466,875 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support research to improve the safety of web browser addons.

Browser addons are downloaded by millions of users to extend the functionality of their web browsers in many ways. However, browsers addons have high privileges and consequently require a high level of scrutiny; for example, malicious addons can easily steal users’ private information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, browsing history, etc.

Prof. Hardekopf’s research goal is to automatically detect malicious addons by (1) designing formal security policies that precisely specify what is and is not acceptable behavior; (2) creating a provably sound security analysis for browser addons to detect policy violations; and (3) developing new tools to help explain the analysis results so that addon reviewers and developers can understand how an addon may violate security.