alt Hacker NewsWhy do these things download into the browser automatically? This could be used to distribute malware and also or hog excessive browser memory.
Replies
gaigalas • today at 1:42 AM
That's... how the web works? You download things on demand.
There are JS files larger than 7MB in the wild. They run on JIT engines that displayed severe CVEs over the years. PDFs, video running directly on special hardware encoders. That's the web now.
A WASM model is not that offensive.
This doesn't add any malware risks beyond what a JavaScript-enabled browser already allows.
Re excessive browser memory use: Yes, it adds non-negligible weight, but again, you could already achieve excessive browser memory usage before this. For comparison, a true color 1080p image, uncompressed (which is needed for actual display on screen) is only slightly smaller at 6.22Mb.