tex: add stuff on browsers

also mention Gemini (https://gemini.circumlunar.space/)

tex/abbreviations.tex

@@ -13,11 +13,15 @@ PID & Process ID \\
 Cgroup & Control group \\
 
 TLS & Transport Layer Security \\
+TCP & Transmission Control Protocol \\
 SSH & Secure Shell \\
+DNS & Domain Name System \\
+ISP & Internet Service Provider \\
 GPG & GNU Privacy Guard \\
 GNU & GNU's Not Unix! \\
 CSS & Cascading Style Sheets \\
 API & Application Programming Interface \\
+CLI & Command Line Interface \\
 SCM & Source Code Management \\
 HIBP & Have I Been Pwned \\
 

tex/references.bib

@@ -162,7 +162,7 @@
 	title = {A simple, modern and secure encryption tool (and Go library) with small explicit keys, no config options, and UNIX-style composability.},
 	author = {Filippo Sotille and Ben Cox and age contributors},
 	year = 2021,
-	note={{Available from: \url{https://github.com/FiloSottile/age}. [viewed 2023-05-17]}}
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://github.com/FiloSottile/age}. [viewed 2023-05-23]}}
 }
 
 @misc{x25519rfc7748,
@@ -186,7 +186,49 @@
 	publisher    = "GitHub",
 	howpublished = {[online]},
 	year         = "2007",
-	note={{Available from: \url{https://github.com/504ensicsLabs/LiME}. [viewed 2023-05-17]}}
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://github.com/504ensicsLabs/LiME}. [viewed 2023-05-23]}},
+}
+
+@misc{wwwf,
+	howpublished = {[online]},
+	title = {History of the Web},
+	author = {{World Wide Web Foundation}},
+	year = 2021,
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/}. [viewed 2023-05-23]}}
+}
+
+@misc{ddvweb,
+	howpublished = {[online]},
+	title = {What is this Gemini thing anyway, and why am I excited about it?},
+	author = {{Drew DeVault}},
+	year = 2020,
+	month = nov,
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://drewdevault.com/2020/11/01/What-is-Gemini-anyway.html}. [viewed 2023-05-23]}}
+}
+
+@misc{gemini,
+	howpublished = {[online]},
+	title = {Project Gemini},
+	author = {Solderpunk and Sean Conner and {{The Gemini Contributors}}},
+	year = 2019,
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://gemini.circumlunar.space/} and over Gemini from: \url{gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/} [viewed 2023-05-23]}}
+}
+
+@misc{geminispec,
+	howpublished = {[online]},
+	title = {Speculative Specification},
+	author = {Solderpunk and Sean Conner and {{The Gemini Contributors}}},
+	year = 2019,
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi} and over Gemini from: \url{gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi} [viewed 2023-05-23]}}
+}
+
+@misc{chromiumrootdns,
+	howpublished = {[online]},
+	title = {This well-intentioned Chrome feature is causing serious problems},
+	author = {Anthony Spadafora},
+	year = 2020,
+	month = aug,
+	note={{Available from: \url{https://www.techradar.com/news/this-well-intentioned-chrome-feature-is-causing-serious-problems} [viewed 2023-05-23]}}
 }
 
 % =========================================================================== %

tex/text.tex

@@ -120,31 +120,169 @@ Entropy, dictionaries, multiple factors.
 \n{1}{Web security}\label{sec:websecurity}
 
 The internet, being the vast space of intertwined concepts and ideas, is a
-superset of the Web, which is the part of the internet that is discussed in the
+superset of the Web, since not everything that is available on internet can be
-next section.
+described as web \emph{resources}. But precisely that is the part of the
+internet that is discussed in the next sections and covers what browsers are,
+what they do and how they relate to web security.
+
 
 \n{2}{Browsers}\label{sec:browsers}
 
-The following subsection covers what browsers are, what they do and how they
-relate to web security.
-
 TODO: describe how browsers find out where the web page lives, get a webpage,
 parse it, parse stylesheets, run scripts, apply SAMEORIGIN restrictions etc.
-
 TODO: (privileged process running untrusted code on user's computer), history,
 present, security focus of the development teams, user facing signalling
 (padlock colours, scary warnings).
 
+Browsers, sometimes used together with the word that can serve as a real tell
+for their specialisation - web browsers - are programs intended for
+\emph{browsing} of \emph{the web}. In more technical terms, browsers are
+programs that facilitate (directly or via intermediary tools) domain name
+lookups, connecting to web servers, optionally establishing a secure
+connection, requesting the web page in question, determining its \emph{security
+policy} and resolving what accompanying resources the web page specifies and
+depending on the applicable security policy, requesting those from their
+respective origins, applying stylesheets and running scripts. Constructing a
+program that can speak many protocols, securely runs untrusted code from the
+internet is no easy task.
+
+\n{3}{Complexity}
+
+Browsers these days are also quite ubiquitous programs running on
+\emph{billions} of consumer-grade mobile devices (which are also notorious for
+bad update hygiene) or desktop devices all over the world. Regular users
+usually expect them to work flawlessly with a multitude of network conditions,
+network scenarios (café WiFi, cellular data in a remote location, home
+broadband that is DNS-poisoned by the ISP), differently tuned (or commonly
+misconfigured) web servers, a combination of modern and \emph{legacy}
+encryption schemes and different levels of conformance to web standards from
+both web server and website developers. Of course, if a website is broken, it
+is the browser's fault.  Browsers are expected to detect if \emph{captive
+portals} (a type of access control that usually tries to force the user through
+a webpage with terms of use) are active and offer redirects. All of this is
+immense complexity and the combination of ubiquity and great exposure this type
+of software gets is in the authors opinion the cause behind a staggering amount
+of vulnerabilities found, reported and fixed in browsers every year.
+
+\n{3}{Standardisation}
+
+Over the years, a consortium of parties interested in promoting and developing
+the web (also due to its potential as a digital marketplace, i.e.\ financial
+incentives) and browser vendors (of which the most neutral participant is
+perhaps \emph{Mozilla}, with Chrome being run by Google, Edge by Microsoft and
+Safari/Webkit by Apple) has evolved a great volume of web standards, which are
+also relatively frequently getting updated or deprecated and replaced by
+revised or new ones, rendering the browser maintenance task into essentially a
+cat-and-mouse game.
+
+It is the web's extensibility that enabled this build-up and ironically has
+been proclaimed by some to be its greatest asset. It has also been ostensibly
+been criticised~\cite{ddvweb} in the past and the frustration with the status
+quo of web standards has relatively recently prompted a group of people to even
+create ``\textit{a new application-level internet protocol for the distribution
+of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight
+hypertext format which facilitates linking between files}'':
+Gemini~\cite{gemini}\cite{geminispec} that in the words of its authors can be
+thought of as ``\textit{the web, stripped right back to its essence}'' or as
+``\textit{Gopher, souped up and modernised just a little}'', depending upon the
+reader's perspective, noting that the latter view is probably more accurate.
+
+\n{3}{HTTP}
+
+Originally, HTTP was also designed just for fetching hypertext
+\emph{resources}, but it has evolved since then, particularly due to its
+extensibility, to allow for fetching of all sorts of web resources a modern
+website of today provides, such as scripts or images, or even to \emph{post}
+content back to servers.
+
+HTTP relies on TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), which is one of the
+\emph{reliable} (mandated by HTTP) protocols used to send data across
+contemporary IP (Internet Protocol) networks, to deliver the data it requests
+or sends. When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989 while
+working at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) with a rather
+noble intent as a ``\emph{wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative
+  to give universal access to a large universe of documents}''~\cite{wwwf}, he
+  also invented the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to serve as a formatting
+  method for these new hypermedia documents. The first website was written
+  roughly the same way as today's websites are, using HTML, although the markup
+  language has changed since, with the current version being HTML5.
+
+It has been mentioned that the client \textbf{requests} a \textbf{resource} and
+receives a \textbf{response}, so those terms should probably be defined.
+
+A request is what the client sends to the server. A resource is what it
+requests and a response is the answer provided by the server.
+
+HTTP follows a classic client-server model whereby it is \textbf{always} the
+client that initiates the request.
+
+A web page is, to be blunt, a chunk of \emph{hypertext}. To display a web page,
+a browser first needs to send a request to fetch the HTML representing the
+page, which is then parsed and additional requests for sub-resources are made.
+If a page defines a layout information in the form of CSS, that is parsed as
+well.
+
+A web page needs to be present on the local computer first \emph{before} it can
+be parsed by the browser, and since websites are usually still served by
+programs called \emph{web servers} as in the \emph{early days}, that presents a
+problem of how tell the browser where from the resource should be pulled. In
+today's browsers, the issue is sorted (short of the CLI) by the \emph{address
+bar}, a place into which user types what they wish the browser to fetch for
+them.
+
+The formal name of this segment is a \emph{Universal Resource Locator}, or URL,
+and it contains the schema (or the protocol, such as \texttt{http://}), the
+host address or a domain name and a (TCP) port number.
+
+Since a TCP connection needs to be established first, to connect to a server
+whose only URL contains a domain name, the browser needs to perform a domain
+name \emph{lookup} using system facilities, or as was the case for a couple of
+notorious Chromium versions, send some additional and unrelated queries which
+(with Chromium-based derivatives' numbers) ended up placing unnecessary load
+directly at the root DNS servers~\cite{chromiumrootdns}.
+
+If a raw IP address+port combination is used, the browser attempts to connect
+to it directly and requests the user-requested page by default using the
+\texttt{GET} \emph{method}. A \emph{well-known} HTTP port 80 is assumed unless
+other port is explicitly specified and it can be omitted both if host is a
+domain name or an IP address.
+
+The method is a way for the user-agent to define what operation it wants to
+perform. \texttt{GET} is used for fetching resources while \texttt{POST} is
+used to send data to the server, such as to post the values of an HTML form.
+
+A server response is comprised of a \textbf{status code}, a status message,
+HTTP \textbf{headers} and an optional \textbf{body} containing the content. The
+status code indicates if the original request was successful or not and the
+browser is generally there to interpret these status codes to the user. There
+is enough status codes to be confused by the sheer numbers but luckily, there
+is a method to the madness and they can be divided into groups/classes:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+  \item 1xx: Informational responses
+  \item 2xx: Successful responses
+  \item 3xx: Redirection responses
+  \item 4xx: Client error responses
+  \item 5xx: Server error responses
+\end{itemize}
+
+In case the \emph{user agent} (a web \emph{client}) such as a browser receives
+a response with content, it has to parse it.
+
+A header is additional information sent by both the server and the client.
+
 
 \n{2}{Cross-site scripting}\label{sec:xss}
 
 \n{2}{Content Security Policy}\label{sec:csp}
+
 Content Security Policy has been an important addition to the arsenal of
-website administrators, even though not everybody has necessarily taken notice
+website operators, even though not everybody has necessarily been utilising it
-or even utilised it properly. To understand what guarantees it provides and
+properly or even taken notice. To understand what guarantees it provides and
 what kind of protections it employs, it is first necessary to grok how websites
-are parsed and displayed, which has been discussed in depth in
+are parsed and displayed, which has been discussed in depth in previous
-Section~\ref{sec:browsers}.
+sections.
+
 
 \n{1}{Sandboxing}\label{sec:sandboxing}
 \n{2}{User isolation}