Using Safe Browsing Yandex API in Firefox

Yandex released a build of Firefox 6.0 with its services . One of the novelties is that this build:

• uses the Safe Browsing API of Yandex to warn users about dangerous pages;
• when you click on “Why this page has been blocked”, it shows a Yandex page with information about the infection of the page and the ability to view its saved secure copy.

Yandex did not develop the Safe Browsing API protocol anew, but used open documentation to implement a server that allows it to act as a provider of data accessible via this protocol.

More importantly, with the help of the server of this API, Yandex gives the browser the opportunity to check the URL against a database of dangerous URLs known to Yandex. The masks on which the check takes place are built on the basis of approximately 3 million dangerous pages known to Yandex and relevant to its users. The same database is used to warn users about dangerous pages in Yandex search results and in Opera browser.

Simplified work Safe Browsing API can be represented as follows:
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When using this technology:

1. The amount of data is small (about 5-10 MB for the first day, then - on average no more than 1 MB per day). Information about new URLs that have become or have ceased to be dangerous also becomes available fairly quickly. For the first time, this happens in about 5 hours, and later on an average of one hour.
2. In Yandex, only the hash prefixes of some masks are sent to which the URLs of the pages you are viewing correspond; this happens in about 1% of the page views.
3. Firefox caches URL check results for 10-20 minutes.

You need to understand that the basic technology of Safe Browsing has its limitations, regardless of the data provider. Browser with Safe Browsing API:

1. only warns of the danger of pages - and you make the choice whether to watch or not to watch;
2. protects only from dangerous pages, and does not replace the usual antivirus, but complements its functionality;
3. as an antivirus, does not guarantee 100% protection, and its use does not cancel the rules of safe work on the Internet.

If you want to use Safe Browsing API of Yandex or masks of dangerous URLs, on the basis of which verdicts about the danger of pages, in your systems and products are issued, please contact safesearch@yandex-team.ru .