Is there a way to lock my browser with a password?

Question

It would be OK if it was only with my login password, but I would like to lock both midori and Firefox so that they cannot be used without entering a password. I'm running 12.04.

Solution 1

Use ProfilePassword add-on for firefox. This would lock your firefox profile and whenever you run firefox it will ask for the password you set through add-on preferences.

Yes, these do not provide advanced security. But it's good enough just to prevent someone using firefox. I'm using it for some time now and had no problem yet.

Solution 2

Even if you somehow lock just the browser but leave your computer/account logged in, it's quite possible for anyone to go in, open a terminal, and get the details of your Midori/Firefox history, cookies, stored passwords, etc.

Therefore, it's best to simply lock your screen/computer whenever you are not using it instead of ever leaving it open. Then your login password is required before anyone can do anything with the computer.

Use the Ctrl+Alt+L keyboard shortcut to quickly lock the computer whenever you are not using it.

Solution 3

You can block users (that is, system identifiable users, e.g. users that are created using adduser command, that login separately etc) or users that don't belong in a group (here "webapps").

Find the executable file for firefox:

$ which firefox
/usr/bin/firefox

Change mode (user permissions) from 755 (default) to 750 (not executable and not readable by "others" except for owner and group):

sudo chmod 750 /usr/bin/firefox

Create a group webapps:

sudo addgroup webapps

Add current user ($USER) in webapps group:

sudo adduser $USER webapps

You have to logout/login for changes to take effect.

You may add any other user, e.g. mytestuser:

sudo adduser mytestuser webapps

Change the owner and group from "root" (default) to "webapps":

sudo chown webapps:webapps /usr/bin/firefox

Try running firefox:

firefox

Your user can execute/open firefox, others cannot. If you logout/login with a different user that is not in "webapps" group, you won't be able to execute it. Only users in the webapps group may execute /usr/bin/firefox now.

Revert changes using:

sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/firefox
sudo chown root:root /usr/bin/firefox

Note: This doesn't stop the user from downloading a pre-compiled version of firefox (e.g. from http://www.mozilla.org).

Comments

[Admin]

You want to prevent your username from accessing firefox? Or block every other user except you from opening firefox?

[atenz]

just wondering is there a way to allow only one user to access Browser using SUDO , i mean privileging applications to run using sudo only :)

[ish]

Good suggestion!

[user]

eviluser:~$ cat /usr/bin/firefox >~/firefox 2>&1 && chmod 755 ~/firefox && ~/firefox

[macrobook]

@MichaelKjörling How does 750 permission sound? :) Come to think of it, my answer doesn't stop the user from downloading a compiled version of firefox from mozilla.org/en-US and executing it :P

[user]

@izx No need to use a terminal, just open a file browser and choose to show hidden files (dot-files). It's all right there.