Enterprise browser maker Island says it's now worth $3B

Insta-unicorn Island, with its browser built for the enterprise, has some interesting funding news: it just hit a $3 billion valuation in an era where it's AI or bust in the VC world.  Island announced its latest raise of $175 million in a Series D round of funding, saying it brings the company's value to the aforementioned $3 …

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Autohotkey for help!

^+v::SendInput %Clipboard%

Works even to paste into a VMWare-Websession host screen.

Keepass does something similar if you hit CTRL+V while an entry is selected.

Now I have destroyed $3B, and I am proud of it. Scam does not deserve to survive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Autohotkey for help!

… and for those who can’t do that the Snipping tool and handily paste them into a Word Doc or Paint.net and off to imagetotext.info

A shitty solution, that will just be worked around.

I hope no-one has to use it for anything like Secret Server to access complex passwords - LOL. You’ll be there all day and make up the worst and least secure complex password possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Browser...

A web browser... 3 billion...

No, nope, not getting it.

World's gone mad.

[Aleph0]

Re: Browser...

To me the crazy thing is that they've managed to spend nearly half a bllion dollars, and unless I'm mistaken what they've accomplished is adding logging to Chromium and clearing the clipboard on focus lost.

I suppose that they must be renting some seriously fancy company headquarters because that kind of money sure as hell didn't go into development...

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Browser...

It's worth that much until 100 open source developers and 5 startups offer the same. Then it's worth debt.

[Dostoevsky]

WTF...

Why on earth does a browser have control over where my clipboard pastes to? What stupid piece-of-s*** operating system would let an application do that?

Oh, right, Windoze.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: WTF...

Nope, EVERY OS has a "paste" function. Even IOS and Android, though both took long to adapt. Blocking the OS copy-paste is a laughable feat, that is the issue here.

Even running as a VM with a customized OS would not be able to block the Autohotkey paste method though.

[Dostoevsky]

Re: WTF...

I'm... aware every OS has copy-paste built in. I just misunderstood the article as implying that the browser somehow dictated where my OS clipboard could paste to. I guess it actually has its own internal clipboard, and overrides the usual shortcuts and intents/signals.

[MrXonTR]

At least one of us is confused by this

The sensible explanation is that Island never copies TO the clipboard to prevent data leakage. It must have it's own internal equivalent and possibly the ability to read FROM the host's clipboard.

I'm guessing here since I've never heard of it before, nor has much else of the world going by the lack of public information. It isn't even the top hit for "enterprise browser" but that could be Google fiddling the results in their preferred topic.

[David 132]

Re: At least one of us is confused by this

Quite probably.

It isn't even the top hit for "enterprise browser" but that could be Google fiddling the results in their preferred topic.

With my flippant hat on... Google will black-hole any searches for that term; Windows 11, on the other hand, will detect that you're searching for alternatives to the One True Browser and overlay OS-level "Please Try Edge, We're So LonelyAwesomely Great" banners over your screen.

[Dostoevsky]

Re: At least one of us is confused by this

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks! Still, it's a dumb "feature."

[Diogenes]

Re: At least one of us is confused by this

As a teacher, I can see a use case for this in schools. On the plus side, students will actually read the text and reproduce in their own words rather than cutnpaste. On the other hand, the amount of gibberish we have to read will increase.

[nintendoeats]

Re: At least one of us is confused by this

Come on now...students will jump through incredible hoops to avoid doing what they are supposed to do.

[el_oscuro]

Re: At least one of us is confused by this

As a former high school student 40 years ago, I can attest to this. Someone (who shall remain anonymous) wrote a fake login screen in BASIC for the teletype that connected to LAUSD's PDP-1170. Once we had the teachers password, we could play Zork all period instead of whatever boring lesson was being taught.

[nintendoeats]

Re: At least one of us is confused by this

I was expecting that story to end with "and we all gave ourselves a letter grade bump" :p

[nintendoeats]

Re: WTF...

Ah...have you ever written code that interacts with the X11 clipboard system? The amount of interaction between the copying and pasting applications is...surprising...

[lowwall]

Can it defeat modern copy methods...

such as my wife's preferred option of taking a photo of the screen?

[David 132]

Re: Can it defeat modern copy methods...

Does she send them in the .NORM file format?

[DS999]

Re: Can it defeat modern copy methods...

Between that and the OCR built into photo apps it is a losing battle trying to block cut and paste. Guess the people bidding this up to $3 billion aren't clued into that yet.

[ecofeco]

I love the smell of vaporware in the morning!

It's the smell of profit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I love the smell of vaporware in the morning!

Strictly speaking it is not vapourware as the software does exist *but* it is debatable if it is 100% resistant to copying data out of it.

Apart from Phone apps to OCR the data off a screen or simply taking a photo, I am sure some miscreant will find a way to run some code in a browser to exfiltrate data.

The issue is not with a browser but with the 1000's of ways to write code to do the *same* thing, which means you may block one way to copy data but miss another.

I am sure that this will be breached *eventually* ....... as per usual !!!

:)

[TReko]

Open Source Abuse?

Since it's based on Chromium, which is open source but under the BSD licence, they're taking the work of others an just modifying it slightly for a $3B valuation!

[nintendoeats]

Maybe they aren't selling a browser, but are instead selling themselves as a legal punching bag when things go TITSUP.

[el_oscuro]

A quick way to bypass this

Take a picture of the screen with your phone. Then use one of the many OCR apps to exfil the data.