Ethereum Foundation Funds WEBCAT Development for Wallet and App Front-End Checks
The Ethereum Foundation has allocated funding to support work on WEBCAT (web-based code assurance and transparency), an open-source project aimed at helping browsers verify website code against a signed manifest. The grant is part of the Trillion Dollar Security initiative, which aims to improve security in the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to the announcement, the funding will go towards developing a verification library that Ethereum wallets can integrate, as well as Chromium-browser research and implementation support. Additionally, an independent audit and proposed standardization work will also be supported.
The goal of WEBCAT is to address a gap between encrypted website connections and verification that the code delivered by a site matches code approved by its developers. A compromised web interface could alter a recipient address or present users with a signature request that differs from what the interface displayed.
It's worth noting that the grant does not make the protection available across wallets automatically, as wallet extensions would need to integrate the library and application teams would need to enroll their domains and serve a signed manifest with each release.