Mozilla currently developing PDF.js, a native HTML5-based PDF Renderer for Firefox and plans to offer for their users in future, Web browsers capable of rendering images, text, drawing line which a PDF Reader needs, so Firefox is highly optimized for it.
Benefits with PDF.js/native HTML5 PDF Renderer
Traditional way of using native plugins for the browsers powered by external PDF Readers enlarges trusted code base, Google Chrome uses its sandbox for PDF Renderer to avoid code injection attacks Mozilla feels HTML5-based implementation protects from these problems.
Mozilla says “ We intend to use pdf.js to render PDFs “natively”, within Firefox itself. Our most immediate goal is to implement the most commonly used PDF features so we can render a large majority of the PDFs found on the web”.
Firefox PDF Reader extension powered by PDF.js coming!
Though Mozilla goal is to ship Firefox with PDF.js, currently they’re planning to offer Firefox extension which enables users to view PDFs inline in browser. using PDF.js.
PDF.js is doesn’t contains any code fo0r the attacker to exploit since it uses HTML5 Mozilla feels it will be more secure. PDF.js is currently not part of Mozilla project.
