Re: Sandboxed iframes (was Re: Seamless iframes + CSS3 selectors = bad idea)

On Tue, 19 Jan 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> > On Sun, 6 Dec 2009, Adam Barth wrote:
> >> In some sense, a site needs to vet all URLs for javascript URLs, but 
> >> this behavior means that every time you see "javascript:" in an XSS 
> >> filter, they're probably insecure unless you also see "data:" right 
> >> next door.
> >
> > Any system relying on blacklisting URLs or schemes is just asking for 
> > trouble. You simply cannot do a truly secure filtering mechanism with 
> > anything but a pure whitelisting mechanism, where _everything_ is 
> > whitelisted, including URL schemes.
> 
> We've had this argument a couple of times.  I worry that we're relying 
> too much on authors using strong XSS filters.  I don't have any solid 
> data about how often folks use blacklist-based XSS filters. Anecdotally, 
> I've certainly seen them in the wild.

Sure, but they're (almost certainly) already vulnerable. We could argue 
against almost any addition to the platform on the basis that it could 
introduce a vulnerability in a blacklist-based filter.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 01:52:29 UTC