RE: further with transfers (Re: Clipboard actions BOF table at W3C TPAC)

Paul Libbrecht wrote:
> Yesterday, discussion with Chris Wilson and Adrian Bateman, of MSIE
> team, revealed that allowing arbitrary flavours would be a big
> security hole for Windows at least (I believe this is Windows only but
> can't confirm yet).

I wouldn't call it a security hole as much as I would call it "unbounded attack surface area".  :)  At any rate, it would be surface area for any OS that allowed arbitrary types on the clipboard; this isn't a Windows implementation issue.

> A safer approach may be to require that the browsers make sure the
> things sipped into the clipboard/drag-content are only safe things.

That's the rub of my feedback, yes.

-Chris

Received on Thursday, 23 October 2008 09:58:23 UTC