Good Bear is a new browser project based on a fork of Firefox, developed by a team led by Valery Ledovskoy. The browser is designed to handle websites signed with certificates issued by the Russian Ministry of Digital Development without requiring global trust in the root certificate.
The project implements scoped trust, where the Russian root certificate is only accepted within a dedicated, isolated container. This container uses specific userContextId and OriginAttributes to separate Russian PKI-signed sites from the rest of the web, preventing cross-contamination of cookies, passwords, and session data.
The browser maintains standard security checks for hostnames, expiration, and signatures, but excludes GOST support and universal exceptions. It disables Mozilla-specific services, including telemetry, account synchronization, and add-on auto-updates, while retaining Google Safe Browsing with a project-owned key.
Good Bear is currently in a high state of readiness. Updates for Windows are handled via the native Firefox updater using signed MAR files, while Ubuntu users currently perform manual installations. The team is seeking financial support via Boosty to cover development tools, cloud infrastructure, and build server costs.
