This is not a Google-wide thing… this is from Google’s Context-Aware Access product, which is configurable in Google Workspace environments. OP should direct their ire at their corporate IT or infosec team.
it shouldn’t be an option.<p>Some IT departments just see a “more secure” checkbox and will always check it, even if it doesn’t make sense holistically- sometimes compliance incentivises (or forces) this behaviour.<p>A common example is forcing intune/device enrolment for mobile devices (including ipads)- but not for the infinitely less secure laptops: because no such endpoint enforcement checkbox exists
While this is true, allow me to give another POV. I run corporate security and internal IT for a 100 person SaaS. I "nudge" our users towards Chrome. Why? Because I can manage Chrome using the config infrastructure provided by Google. Because Google has more resources to secure their browser. Because my observability and DLP stuff works with Chrome and not with Firefox. And I'm probably still missing out on a bunch of things.<p>Those are real, practical reasons. Not just "if I do this I get to check another box".<p>Yes. I know. It's a pain that when you cannot do what you want to do. But it's not <i>your</i> laptop. It's the company's. Supporting more browsers to the same standard that I just described would take engineering resources, of which I do not have an infinite supply. And the priority goes to keeping the company secure.
> Because Google has more resources to secure their browser<p>They've kneecapped ad-blockers, when ad networks are perhaps one of the biggest causes of malware installs/page hijacking/other unwanted behaviour. I'm not sure how you can consider Chrome remotely secure in this light.
My org (or rather, the org they pay to run their IT) blocked browser plugins with a security justification.<p>I find this incredibly amusing, and at a different point in my life I'd already be gone.<p>When you outsource IT, there are many, many misaligned incentives.
> I find this incredibly amusing, and at a different point in my life I'd already be gone.<p>How so? Bad actors buying existing extensions with large user bases then publishing a new version which does bad stuff is a pretty common pattern. It certainy seems like a reasonable concern for a corp IT department.
99% of security experts I know use ad blockers.<p>When there are unpatched browser vulnerabilities, attackers will use ad networks to inject attack code into reputable-but-ad-laden websites. And even when there <i>aren't</i> unpatched vulnerabilities out there, many ad networks will happily accept scam ads, ads that trick people into downloading malware, fake download buttons and suchlike.
Not GP, but I think the point was that no extensions => no ad blockers => major malware vehicle unlockable, short of disabling JS
They didn’t take a decade plus to implement per-domain process isolation, for starters…
This is the correct answer. Having your users run multiple browsers by default (instead of with whitelisted exceptions) is now multiple attack surfaces the org has to manage.
while valid points, my company uses Microsoft products and they are pretty abysmal in whatever domain they have products in. Edge for example being one of the weaker browser options. (though better than it was in the IE era).<p>Being forced to use various tools for compliance is frustrating, doubly so if it helps create a stronger monopoly position, because a monopoly position creates stagnation, which makes worse products.<p>But those worse products are forced on users, even when better ones start to come about.<p>This is the crux of my issue, Microsoft is the king of this behaviour, and they are using this a lot which is squeezing the metaphorical testicles of almost all companies in Europe.
If you run a SaaS, large parts of your orgs should be on all major browsers regularly.
I have a handful of endpoints, used by staff that represent a low level of risk, that use Firefox for that precise reason.<p>But really, we have a couple of million enterprise end-users, some of which surely using Edge. If we as much as move a button without telling them about it three months in advance, it's the end of the world. In 10 years time, no customer has raised it.
Do people get pwned by anything besides spearphishing or ads nowadays? I think ad->phish or targeted phish emails is the only shady thing I've been exposed to in like 10 years
<i>It's a pain that when you cannot do what you want to do. But it's not your laptop. It's the company's.</i><p>But it is my craft, and to be limited to what tools I can use in my craft can decrease the value of my work, and in doing so decrease the company's productivity.
Let's say you earn a million dollars a year (most of us earn far less). At quite a few companies, a 50% decrease in your productivity (and changing browsers is nowhere near that) would cost the company significantly less than dealing with the fallout of any of the following:<p>* A user intentionally leaking sensitive documents outside the corporate network<p>* A user installing an infected browser extension that gives attackers access to corporate resources<p>* A user accessing malware or ransomware which infects corporate resources.<p>That's on top of the cost of having the IT department having to debug issues among users with bespoke tool sets which can often interact in unintuitive ways.<p>There are many stupid ways that companies "optimize" costs that cost them more in the end. Standardizing the browser and extension set for data loss protection is not one of them.
This feels like the whole IE6 dance coming back.<p>People know how it ended, but don't seem to remember how it started, which is a shame.
> But it's not your laptop. It's the company's.<p>Sure, which is why you should lock down the laptop. Blocking Firefox in Google Workspace seems like entirely the wrong layer for this.
Google has the resources to do it, but do they actually do it? By the looks of it I'd say "no".<p>See the whole thing with libxml2 for example, or how they started boringssl to "fix" the issues with openssl, but they run it as an internal project you cannot depend on.
having soon-to-be-nonfunctional adblocking will be far more dangerous to org than any extra security those options might provide
It's their organization. They are allowed to make decisions about what software their employees use. I'm a die-hard Mozilla fan, but I don't find this unreasonable.
The problem is Google appears to label this as a security feature. I'm fine with the feature existing, but it should say something like "require Chrome" or "block Firefox" not "require a secure browser (wink wink we actually mean Chrome)"
The wording here is bad, but basically CAA supports non browser specific policy and, in some cases, browser specific policy (GSuite offers a "Managed Chrome" policy). Firefox users can leverage much of the non browser specific policy, they obviously can not be a part of the "Managed Chrome" offering.
There's no contradiction here; it's totally possible for a company to make a feature configurable so that it doesn't block their competitors but also intentionally design and market it in a way that's misleading in ways that will lead to their competitors getting blocked. When we're talking about a company as large as Google and a product with as much market share as Chrome, I don't think it's that crazy to think that things like this add up to encouraging even more hegemony, and when that happens to align perfectly with the incentives of the company making said product decisions, I also don't think it's crazy to think it's unlikely to be a coincidence.
It is a security feature. In a corporate environment, you generally don't want users installing their own software. If it's a remote access thing from a personal device, you still generally want to be able to establish some kind of baseline. I don't like Chrome - not even a little bit - but I will admit that they have a pretty damn good security track record. I'd rather my remote users be on there than some crusty Firefox installation with 40 extensions. Organizations have the right to make these decisions when they are the ones that own the data. For example, when I was still in that world, we required personal phones to be encrypted to access corporate email. This was when a lot of people would still walk around with devices without a pin. People complained, but it was non-negotiable.
Literally the only reason they can argue Chrome is more secure than Firefox in that kind of setting is because they can Google can push Google Chrome profiles via Google Workspaces but they’ve never working with Mozilla to create an interop for Firefox.<p>When Microsoft did this with Windows, AD, and Internet Explore, it was deemed a breach of anti-trust laws. The question is whether such laws apply to Google given they don’t have a monopoly in the identity services domain.<p>If you’d asked me 5 years ago, I’d have said “no way”, but recent judgements with Apple and their App Store lead me to think there is still hope. Regardless of how remote that might be.
Note that making lock-in features like this effectively proprietary to the Chrome browser is only possible because of the fact that it's the same company making Google Workspace and Google Chrome.<p>I absolutely see many problems with this and you really ought to as well.
Google and Microsoft shouldn’t be giving levers that bake you more into their ecosystem regardless.<p>Your corporate serfdom is not in question, but I disagree with that notion too.
It's a paid product, they are actually allowed to do this. Google is obviously going to focus on security testing with their own browser. It's understandable that organizations want to require chrome for their employees to access their workspace in the interest of security, but it's not the default.<p>There is zero problem here guys.
> It's understandable that organizations want to require chrome for their employees to access their workspace in the interest of security, but it's not the default.<p>Can you elaborate on why you think that Firefox is inherently insecure in some way for accessing Google workspaces?<p>> It's a paid product, they are actually allowed to do this.<p>If that were the only metric, then no monopoly would ever be broken up for any reason (which I guess is the way regulation seems to work nowadays, but at least in theory it's supposed to be possible for it to happen sometimes). The idea that using market pressure from one product a company sells to squeeze out competition in another is totally fine as long as the first product is paid is not a premise I agree with.
I don’t think anyone is saying Firefox is inherently bad. What I’m reading, and what I believe, is Google just has a better product for secure enterprise browsing because of the controls they offer<p>The browser is where basically all your work happens, especially as a Workspace customer—think about how much of your work is done in the browser. That makes it a huge, attractive attack surface. And attackers don't even need a browser vulnerability; they can just convince an employee to install a malicious browser extension, and suddenly they can steal passwords, watch everything you do, and hijack your sessions on other sites.<p>So security teams need visibility into what's happening in the browser. Google does a decent—not great—job of providing this through Managed Chrome: centralized logs, control over which extensions can be installed, even alerts when someone reuses their Workspace password elsewhere.<p>Firefox, Safari, and most others don't offer these business controls, which means a security team allowing them is flying blind. And a blind security team is gonna have a bad time… mmmkay.<p>On support: someone mentioned using Firefox to verify their app works across browsers—god's work, truly. But not every vendor does that, so IT ends up fielding "this site just isn't working" tickets that turn out to be browser compatibility issues. Fewer supported browsers means a smaller surface to support and a better experience all around.<p>This can't be enforced where you're not using your corporate identity. A Dropbox account on your personal email is still accessible from any browser.
> Can you elaborate on why you think that Firefox is inherently insecure in some way for accessing Google workspaces?<p>Allowing users running who knows what version of Firefox (or any "non-validated"/unmanaged browser, not necessarily just Firefox) browser running who knows what extensions can be pretty unsafe. There are lots of malicious extensions out there that are stupid simple to install.<p>In the Workspace world, Chrome can be configured and enforced to have certain kinds of settings applied. Only allowing certain extensions. Ensure certain version ranges. That sort of thing.
If a corporation with my data allowed access to its internal tools using any browser running any arbitrary and possibly compromised third party extensions, that's a data leak and class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
I would say it's common to find dark patterns that involves ambiguity like the discussion we are having here. We can't know for sure but Google can increase the probability of being on their ecosystem.
Well, it could als also be argued that Chrome _is_ more secure, for example because it uses app-bound encryption using Windows DPAPI system, for cookies, so that it at least tries to protect cookies from malicious applications running on the device. Firefox does not do this: <a href="https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/279629/are-cookies-stored-with-encryption-and-and-how-do-browsers-protect-them" rel="nofollow">https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/279629/are-cook...</a><p>If course the reverse can also be argued, for example that Firefox supports proper adblocking.
CAA is one of the most powerful security features you can enable in an org. You can manage browser extensions, device password policy, encryption, configuration, cookie attestation, etc.
CAA is completely based on trust, it's not one of the most powerful security feature. It's completely voluntary reporting by the browser, and any attacker who cares can just lie without issues.<p>You can make Firefox pass CAA if you want. You take the Chrome "SecureConnect Reporting" (Context-Aware Access) plugin, port it to Firefox with some light changes, and you can report whatever you want to CAA.
That's not entirely true. For example, on ChromeOS CAA is hardware backed. But obviously CAA is not intended to be our entire MDM solution, an attacker in a position to spoof your entire browser can bypass some of the policies on some operating systems. Similarly, attackers in that same position can bypass TLS. An attacker who owns the kernel can bypass much of your MDM. An attacker who owns the hardware can bypass just about anything.
I haven't dug into the native helper to see how much it checks, I can believe that ChromeOS does full remote attestation. If it's anything like Android Play Integrity, there's not a lot of flexibility without hardware exploits.<p>But who outside of Google is running exclusively ChromeOS?
My impression from looking at the JS part is that it's mostly obfuscation, with the possible exception of ChromeOS.<p>I feel like the secure connect client being closed source would have been an effective deterrent 5 years ago, but these days everyone's throwing LLMs at everything. So an attack that would have taken effort doesn't present nearly as much of a barrier anymore. At least as long as there remain some platforms that don't enforce full attestation...
My point was that CAA's threat model is flexible based on your requirements. If your requirement is "an attacker with the ability to make arbitrary network requests from the host can not pretend to be Chrome", CAA does not work unless you have OS/Hardware support (which ChromeOS provides).<p>I just don't think that matters much. CAA is policy enforcement, it is not a full MDM solution, nor is it antimalware.
If it can't prove what it purports to prove, then it is not policy enforcement, because it is not anything enforcement.<p>But someone thinks it is, which is harmful to them on top of being an annoyance to everyone else.
> But who outside of Google is running exclusively ChromeOS?<p>I think Chromebooks are pretty common in school settings
Understand that, in this conversation, your use of "attacker" is referring to "end user of the hardware". Which might be part of the Chrome team's definition, or might not, but gosh it would be nice to cater to the folks who are using the dang computer.
Well - it does make sense. If an organisation that contracts me has to chose between a) BYOD - but restrict downloads, etc, enforce export control, directly in the browser - I happily take that, vs getting a Windows laptop that is locked down and forced to work with that.
Using a maintained and up-to-date browser is a reasonable requirement for an IT department (should be for anyone really). Would you suggest they should be allowing IE6 just because a user might prefer it?<p>Of course Google is going to suggest using Chrome, if they detect that the browser might be out of date.
Is the implication that Firefox is not maintained or?<p>The issue presented doesn’t seem to be “an up to date browser check” it seems to be a “is it latest chrome” check, which is a very different thing.
We don't know. The author doesn't mention how current the Firefox browser is/was.<p>If the organization is indeed enabling a specific check for Chrome that seems a little over the top but they're the ones supporting their users and if they want to make their life easier by only dealing with one browser that's their decision to make. It's like saying that everyone has to use Windows, or a specific line of laptops, or any other standardization to simplify the support workload.
> This was for a Google Workspace Business Plus account and workspace, from an up to date browser and OS.
Not a little over the top, it is anticompetitive behavior.
It's not a little over the top its an antitrust issue and clearly and obviously wrong.
It's not clear to me that Context-Aware Access is as configurable as you're implying. At a glance, the docs seem to suggest that Chrome is the <i>only</i> browser you can force standardization on, which IMO does push this towards being Google's fault.
No, not at all. The implication is that the organization is dictating the software that employees are to use. There's nothing unusual about this.
If we are meant to believe that this is a Chrome-invasion-move, it's the least effective lever of all times. Most of the time the more plausible explanations are just the likely ones.
If that's a the goal, then IT department should start by blocking user ability to install Firefox or other unapproved software not by blocking access to google workspace. Blocking access to google workspace using Firefox doesn't prevent using it for everything else. It's not like the google services are going to exploit a vulnerability in Firefox, everything else might.
Strawman argument. Firefox is maintained and up to date browser.<p>Why did you even compare it to IE6, out of the curiosity?
Its a normal choice, given a checkbox on page which advertises that checking it would make your security posture more safe. The IT person is safeguarding their own job.<p>Other way to look at it is, the company is paying for everything, and they get to make decisions based on what suits their security needs.
"it shouldn’t be an option."<p>What? Are you serious? An organization has EVERY right to enforce whatever controls they deem appropriate for their environment. Period.
Hi there, original author here. Can confirm we're not using IAP for this workspace, or anything I was trying to access
Is it not:<p><a href="https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/security/create-context-aware-access-levels" rel="nofollow">https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/security/create...</a><p>The Org admin can put all sorts of restrictions on who can do what based on the client device setup.
Unrelated to this news, but this is so rudimentary, when the correct solution instead is:<p>1. Make it ridiculously easy to install hardware vendor keys and register it with OS of choice. (like a standardized dialog box in UEFI and a standardized/regulated IPMI-like interface)<p>2. Allow for only measured boot on those devices.<p>3. Provided facility to verify signatures.<p>Do this on consumer and enterprise laptops and desktops alike and all of these weird set of conditions just go out of play and replaced by something much much simpler.
Why is there a policy to require “Chrome” and not a policy to require another browser, hmm?
Google offers "Managed Chrome" as a service. What would you like them to do, offer "Managed Firefox"? Should AWS offer "Managed GCP"?
Google offering "Managed Chrome" is probably the root issue.<p>Call me old school, but wedging an already dominant browser to be the only full fledge option in GSuite using companies reeks anti-competition.
I don’t think Google should also offer a product that detects “managed Chrome”
I don't think Google should also be allowed to remain in charge of Chrome at all but here we are.
Uh, why? Context Aware Access is a policy attestation service. Managed Chrome is exactly the sort of thing you'd have policies for.
Organization admins may roll out hardened Firefox settings via their MDM solution, and then based on that want to restrict usage to Firefox.
Because Google is able to configure Chrome to the admin's liking.
> The Org admin can put all sorts of restrictions on who can do what based on the client device setup.<p>can you put a restriction to ban Chrome and force Firefox then?
"wow look at all these options available...to limit users to only use software provided by the same corp" you are missing the point entirely.
It appears website developers desperately want to return to a world where browsers actively pretend to be another browser*.<p>Want to check for DBSC? Enjoy not knowing whether the browser vendor decided to just roll a simple software implementation.<p>Nothing good comes from browser detection over feature detection anyways. It's time to do away with user-agents and other overt identifying markers, and if we're still not in a better place, aggressively start stubbing features.<p>* to some degree they still are. Firefox still ships with an user-agent override list for certain websites that have outdated user-agent sniffing for feature detection (and other fixes in about:compat).
You mean the same that gave Chrome its market share, by adopting ChromeOS features, and shipping Electron apps?
Cloudflare blocked me with a chrome windows useragent on Firefox+Fedora
What is the process to aggressively stub features? Does that mean pushing patches to Firefox and/or Ladybird and/or Servo?
And yet, claiming support for a feature doesn't tell all. Different implementations can have subtle differences. Knowing the browser and version can allow a client to survive that.
Yes, that is the price developers will have to pay. Development will be harder, but users are going to prefer somewhat broken sites over being outright refused entry.<p>At the end of the day user-preference is what dictates which browser is used and how it is configured. Developers will have to deal with what users choose to do on their end.<p>You can only patronize people for so long before they look for a way around silly restrictions. Trying to keep someone safe by putting up walls, whether the threat is real or imaginary, is pointless when it is in the user's power to trivially defeat those walls - and when extension and browser developers are going to line up to sell them demolition tools (see ad blocking).<p>Advice is going to go much further than roadblocks, long term.
Hi folks, blog author here.<p>Few comments based on common threads<p>- No we don't have, or use, IAP and haven't configured it<p>- Yes I'm the admin so can confirm this<p>- "Context aware access" is only available on enterprise, we're just on "Workspace business plus"<p>Happy to answer any other questions
That's fine. The second I stopped caring, which is the day I stopped working for a living, I stopped worrying about what Google thinks. I don't use Google for email or search. (my email addresses are with proton, iCloud, and Hey, and my search is DDG) I'm not a big video person so I never use Youtube, the few times I need to use an office product I will either use OnlyOffice, or the Apple stuff. My Phone is an iPhone (with the stuff mentioned above) My browser is Firefox with uBlock Origin, and I almost never have problems with this setup.
It states something about "your organisation's security requirements", do they document what requirements cause this rejection page? Some kind if changed default perhaps?
No, this is easily the biggest flaw in CAA - there is <i>no way</i> to discover which policy broke your access. I have reported this to Google multiple times, even sent this directly to a Google SecEng (a well known one) to route internally. The issue persists and makes configuring CAA extremely painful and error prone.
Maybe not, but I have the feeling Google doesn't like that FF continues to support manifest v2.
If people want specifics about what this is, look here:<p>> <a href="https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/security/context-aware-access-examples-for-advanced-mode#device-examples" rel="nofollow">https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/security/contex...</a><p>In particular "Allow access to devices using Chrome browser with security requirements" would present this message.
I love that google always sends useless canned responses after basically requiring you to perform a blood sacrifice to get ahold of anyone.
They wont stop it. They will just slow down a bit if people get ruffled. That's how alphabet has handled everything else. They learned that if they can make changes slowly enough, they can do whatever the hell they want to.<p>As we all know we can even pay 10x more for items and get next to no raise in our wages, but because it was done slowly in an "official" and "professional" manner, most folks didn't even complain, they just screamed into the giant pillow we call "the internet".<p>Corporations of the 2020s love the internet's digital pillow and its magical crowd-quieting capabilities. If only the ancient roman empire had invented the internet they would be ruling the entire planet by now and we could watch gladiators on youtube :P provided we don't stand out too much (then we would be said gladiators)
Seems like a monopolistic move.
At least you got a heads-up. Few months back GCP "Agent Studio - Build" failed compiling the code in sandbox with a vague error message. Spent weeks troubleshooting, spoke to google engineers and reps, sending code, step by steps, screenshots. No one had a clue, until I switched from Firefox to Chrome out of desperation and it worked without a hitch.
Sounds like you have a device policy configured and you should talk to your internal IT/Security team?<p>edit: This title is just incredibly misleading. OP seems to have made a mistake here in thinking that this is something that Google has done when it's just that their corporate IT/ Sec team now enforces using Chrome.
It is probably Chrome Enterprise which lets you lock down, for example, what extensions people are allowed to install. There is a legit reason for organizations to want to standardize on one browser and to lock it down (as browser extensions are a major source of infiltration these days).
Not defending it, but given that they use the word "secure" three times in two sentences, I'm wondering if it's shown to browsers that don't support DBSC. Google has been really pushing/overselling this as a magical solution to cookie theft.
I know Google finally kicked all their employees off alternate browsers but doing it for external customers is definitely a choice
Reading the news of EU countries leaving American cloud providers for local cloud solutions including mobile office, it's surprising to see Google doing this.<p>It will only accelerate moves towards location of data, self-hosting, etc. The technologies to make this possible are much easier than they ever have been.
Does Chromium would still work?
I use Google as a secondary search and as of roughly last week it gives me a captcha every time I try to do a search. That had never been the case before.
I browse over Tor for most things and most sites give me a captcha or just simply fail to load these days. I just close the window and move on to something else.
I am seeing it a lot more lately with uBlock Origin. I've used DDG for search for a while now, but the last few times I've tried Google I got a captcha within a couple of queries if not immediately.
For a few years now Google has given me a captcha whenever my VPN is on (Private Internet Access)
That one has been a well-known thing for a decade if not more; it's not just Google, half the Internet will start throwing captchas or denying access once you connect via a VPN (specifically "VPN" as in one of the services you pay to avoid location-based discrimination of media streaming platforms).
Smells anticompetitive to me
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!<p>Do your homework before yelling "Fire!".
Oh look, a monopolist is making settings "more secure" by enshrining monopoly more.<p>And good fucking luck getting the FTC to follow monopoly law.
[flagged]
Do it then