LastPass browser extension for Apple Safari. This is a Mac App which includes the Safari extension. Click here for installation help. LastPass for Microsoft Edge. If you're using Chromium-based Microsoft Edge, this one's for you. LastPass browser extension for Microsoft Edge without a binary component. Features dependent on a binary component. More than Safari: How to Switch Between Mac Web Browsers Thursday, February 15th, 2018 Author: Steve Sande. MacOS comes with a secure, fast and compatible built-in web browser — Safari. A lot of Mac users prefer to use Safari for their web browsing, but may decide to use another browser due to familiarity, compatibility issues with Safari.

SHARE

For many years, there was a widely-held notion that Apple Mac users were more secure than their Windows counterparts. In recent years, however, that notion has been challenged.

In 2012 Apple Mac OS X users were specifically targeted for exploitation by way of a Java vulnerability. Apple has since made multiple moves to improve its handling of Java. Yet according to Carl Livitt, managing security associate at security firm Bishop Fox, simply updating Java and keeping Mac OS X up-to-date aren't enough anymore to guarantee browser security.

'The browser presents such a huge attack surface,' Livitt told eSecurity Planet. 'It's not just things like Java and Flash; there are also problems in the browser itself.'

Livitt recently published a brief guide on how to secure Mac OS X browsers and is also a contributing author of the book, Web Hacking Exposed.

https://o1.qnsr.com/log/p.gif?;n=203;c=204660770;s=9477;x=7936;f=201812281321530;u=j;z=TIMESTAMP;a=20396194;e=i

A key challenge with Mac OS X browser security is that the browser typically runs with the same permissions and access to the operating system as the user. How to convert dvd to mp4 with windows media player.

'If you run under the assumption that someone will hack your browser eventually, you then have to limit the things that you yourself can do with a browser in order to limit the things that an attacker can do,' Livitt suggested.

Securing Mac OS X

Use multiple browsers. At the top of Livitt's list of suggestions for Mac OS X browser security is for users to run multiple browsers beyond just the default Apple Safari. There are a number of reasons why running multiple browsers is a good idea, limiting risk chief among them. For a Web-based email system like Google's Gmail, for example, many users typically stay logged into Gmail all day. If the browser is hacked, the user's Gmail account and permissions could potentially be at risk. Livitt recommended that users either run Gmail in its own browser that is only being used for email, or simply not stay logged into Gmail all day.

Consider sandboxing the browser. Going a step further, those who are even more risk averse might want to sandbox the browser to limit its access to operating system components. One of the multiple ways of sandboxing on Mac OS X is with the Ironfox application shell script wrapper for Firefox.

Protect cache/cookie information. Cookies and cache stores, which could potentially include authentication information, are among the most valuable sources of information on a user's browser. One way to help insure that cookie information does not persist beyond a given session is by way of a plugin called Better Privacy. It goes beyond just the typical browser cookie clearing to make sure that cookies from Flash or other add-ons are also removed, on a time basis or on browser exit.

Supplement native firewall capabilities. Mac OS X has its own built-in firewall and anti-malware capabilities which provide a degree of protection for users. To supplement the built-in capabilities, Livitt suggests the use of a program called Little Snitch. Little Snitch is an advanced firewall that tracks all incoming and outgoing connections from a machine.

It also provides a pop-up window each time a program tries to connect to something, requesting users to explicitly grant permission. 'After a while, you train Little Snitch to allow or block things,' Livitt said.

If a Mac OS X browser is somehow breached and the attacker tries to make a connection to server in China that the user doesn't know about, for example, Little Snitch will alert the user before the connection is made. 'Little Snitch is a pretty great addition to the crappy OS X firewall,' Livitt added.

Impacting OS X Usability

A primary tenent of Mac OS X is usability. Adding additional layers of browser security could impact some of that usability, at least initially.

As you add more protection, you have to jump through more hoops, Livitt noted. That said, he said the additional measures typically just involve a bit more up-front work by the user until they get used to it.

'Like most things in life, a little hard work up front pays dividends in the end,' he said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eSecurity Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

While Safari is the default browser and the one most people use on their Macs, you can also easily use Chrome or Firefox. The advantage to those is being able to use the same browser on non-Apple devices, and for Chrome being able to use Google's cloud systems instead of Apple's. Both are free and easy to install, and may come in handy in situations where Safari doesn't work.

Check out Alternative Mac Browsers Chrome and Firefox at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Video Transcript: So chances are if you're surfing the web on your Mac you're doing it with Safari which is the builtin web browser and that's what most people use. It's what I use. But there are other options. The browser wars are still going on. There are two major browsers that other Mac users use. So we have Safari and that just comes with your Mac. Another browser you can get is called Chrome. So Chrome is from Goggle. It shares a lot of the same code that Safari does. The open source part. The part that renders web pages and things like that. So you're going to find that pages look very similar if not identical whether you use Goggle Chrome or you use Safari. So what's the advantage.Well, the advantage to using Chrome is if you're using the Goggle Ecosystem, in other words you're using Goggle's cloud services. Maybe you also have an android phone. Maybe you've got a Windows machine and you're using Chrome there since it's the most popular browser on Windows. You can then share things like passwords and bookmarks and all of that using your Goggle account. So if you want cross platform compatibility then you might want to use Chrome on each operating system. You can't use Safari on Windows anymore so you're kind of stuck using something like Chrome across. You can, of course, just use Safari Mac and Chrome on Windows. That's fine. But if you want to have information available across those platforms using Chrome might be the way to do it. Another browser that you can use is Firefox. Firefox has been in the news recently because they just came out with a new version of the Firefox browser. You can get that for Mac as well. It has a similar advantage in that you can get Firefox on Windows and on Mac but it doesn't have quite the market share that Chrome has. Chrome has really become the dominant browser at least for computers in general. Although, of course, the dominate browser on Macs is clearly Safari since is comes preinstalled on your Mac and most people won't move beyond that. Now both Chrome and Firefox and Safari all have extensions. But different extensions are available for each. So if you're a developer sometimes Firefox can have an extension that you want or need to be able to develop and the same thing with Chrome. Now Firefox is going to sometimes look a little different than either Chrome or Safari on your Mac because it's rendering things with a little bit different code. But today, in 2017, things look pretty much the same as standards have been around for a long time and the browsers all kind of render the HTML on each web page in the same way. One big reason you may want to have multiple browsers available on your machine is that every once in awhile you run into a website that doesn't work with Safari. Safari is probably the strictest in terms of security. So it's not giving access to some apps that may want to be able to access things for video conferencing say or, you know, special security things or downloading things from certain websites, viewing things using certain plugins. It may not be available in Safari. So having Firefox and Chrome is a good way to have a backup. I've run into a few situations, usually in some pretty select environments, where I've needed to have Chrome available so that I could view a webpage or download some content. Now both Firefox and Chrome are free to download and easy to download. They can live right along side Safari in your Applications folder. It doesn't hurt to have them sitting there just for such an occasion. Getting these apps is pretty easy. For Chrome just go to Goggle.com/chrome or just search for Chrome Mac. Firefox is the same kind of thing. Mozilla.org is where you want to go and then there's a download link right there. You can also just search for get Firefox and you'll find it as the top link. So you can just download either of these for free and have them available. Both also have mobile versions that you can get for iOS. So you can add Chrome and you can add Firefox as alternative browsers to have on your iPhone or iPad as well. Now for the typical Mac user you're not going to need anything but Safari. If you do use Chrome or Firefox on your Mac I'd love to hear why you use it. So leave a comment here at MacMost.com and let me know why you prefer or why you sometimes occasionally have to use Firefox or Chrome.