Firefox 70: Site Isolation testing begins officially

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Mozilla has been working on integrating site isolation in the Firefox web browser for a while. Called Project Fission, the goal is to improve security in the Firefox web browser by isolating content by site in the browser.

Firefox uses a multi-process system currently that divides website content and browser specific content using multiple processes. Multiple sites may share a process and one of the main goals of Project Fission is to isolate these, including cross-site iframes, entirely.

Google implemented site isolation in its Chrome browser in 2018 stating that the feature improved security and stability of the browser. Google noted however that the feature would increase memory usage by about 20% on average.

Firefox users could enable Fission when the Nightly version hit version 69 already but this was mostly useful for internal testing of functionality. Now, with the release of Firefox 70 Nightly comes an official "go" from the organization to test the new site isolation feature.

Site isolation is not enabled by default in the Firefox web browser at the time of writing. Users need to enable Fission to make use of it. When it is enabled, Firefox will load any cross-site iframe in its own content process.

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