Safari extensions for Malwarebytes

[Massimiliano]

By the way @treed, are there any news for the Malwarebytes extension for Safari (even only in beta)?

Thanks

[treed]

Nothing to report yet, unfortunately. There are some challenges involved with the changes Apple has made to Safari extensions lately.

[Massimiliano]

13 hours ago, treed said:

Nothing to report yet, unfortunately. There are some challenges involved with the changes Apple has made to Safari extensions lately.

What do you recommend while waiting?

Is Google Safe Browsing sufficient?

I only use Safari on macOS Catalina 10.15.3

Thank you

 

PS: I noticed that with Firefox installed the MWB scan takes 18 "on my Mac. Uninstalling Firefox changes to 3". I don't know if it affects all additional browsers. Change little but it's a noticeable difference (6 times as much)

Edited March 3, 2020 by MAXBAR1
Added PS

[adas]

@MAXBAR1,

Thank you for the feedback.

Do you remember by any chance the number of add-ons / extensions installed in Firefox?

For Safari, I prefer to use  KA-block or 1blocker.

[Massimiliano]

On Firefox I only had Malwarebytes Browser Guard.

Is the ad-blocker sufficient for Safari?

Doesn't Google Safe Browsing need additional web protection?

If so I already use Ka-Block! It is the only extension I have

In the meantime, thank you for the new beta version (4.2.11) with automatic update to the new versions received right now while I replied

Edited March 4, 2020 by MAXBAR1
added beta

[alvarnell]

Sounds like you need to read up on Google Safe Browsing. For participating browser users, when it is enabled and working, it protects you from visiting dangerous sites or downloading dangerous files. The only issue is that it must be able to stay up-to-date or it shuts down after a relatively short period of time (not sure what that is today). If for any reason it’s database isn’t current, then it cannot be used. I’ve not seen statistics on how timely it is, but one would hope that they have sufficient staff to analyze sites and post negative findings in a timely manner. 

That’s a completely different area of protection from what you get with an adblocker which does it’s site analysis in real time looking for known providers of advertising and preventing those portions of the current page from rendering. That has the added benefit of preventing malvertising.

[Massimiliano]

@alvarnell I thank you for the link provided to me that I read.

I'm aware of what an ad-blocker is doing and now even more aware about Google Safe Browsing.  

I asked @adas and @treed for information because this protection is also present on iOS but in addition there is Malwarebytes Web Protection for Safari and I wanted to ask what I could do while waiting for greater protection by Malwarebytes

[alvarnell]

Well they should be back in a few hours to express their opinions. My adblocker recommendations would be the same as @adas plus saying I don’t think there is anything else available today to reinforce what Safe Browsing is designed to do.

But I have taken a different approach by installing Pi-hole® on a RasberryPi to act as my network DNS server which protects all my local networked devices against all dangerous connections. It’s blacklist currently includes 994,697 domains of dangerous and annoying sites. That way I don’t need any browser protection add-ons for a small expense and very little maintenance.