The Digital Press

A new system called Web Application Integrity, Consistency, and Transparency (WAICT) aims to improve the security and trustworthiness of JavaScript on the web by ensuring code integrity, consistent distribution, and public auditability, especially for cryptographic web applications. It uses cryptographic hashes, append-only logs, and public transparency services to provide guarantees similar to app stores but without central control.

Why it matters: WAICT addresses fundamental security issues in JavaScript cryptography and web app integrity, protecting users from malicious code and supply chain attacks.

The big picture: The system combines subresource integrity, integrity manifests, hash-chain logs, and transparency services to ensure code authenticity, detect tampering, and maintain historical records publicly.

Deployment challenges: Requires cooperation among transparency services, witnesses, asset hosts, and browsers; also demands careful balancing of consistency, opt-in/out ease, and privacy without added latency.

Commenters say: Many appreciate the transparency logs and auditing improvements but stress the need for native code signing, simpler integration, and question complexity and actual problem scope. Some highlight hosting third-party scripts locally as a practical alternative.