Re: [whatwg] window.opener security issues (Was: WhatWG is broken)

Thanks Michael. So to be safe one should use Edge? Who'd have thunk it?

Anyone tested Michael's example on FireFox or Safari?

It does look like Chrome is the driver of rel=noopener. Does the credential
API https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-credential-management/ rely on this
flaw?

On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 11:44 AM, Michael A. Peters <mpeters@domblogger.net>
wrote:

> If window.opener() did not work cross-domain then as far as I can tell
> that would be secure.
>
>
> On 12/01/2016 07:23 PM, Richard Maher wrote:
>
>> I see what you're saying Michael and also agree it's serious. Would I be
>> correct in thinking that MS Edge solves the problem by not returning
>> window.opener cross-domain? Is the UA not a logical and uniform place for
>> this?
>>
>> BTW I've also experienced the CitHub topic-closure nazis many times :-(
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Michael A. Peters <
>> mpeters@domblogger.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Well if it was done as a header, I suppose it could be added as a
>>> http-equiv meta tag for those who want to.
>>>
>>> Header is the easiest solution to make sure it is applied everywhere
>>> without question. It could even be added at the front-end proxy to cover
>>> numerous web applications on many domains at once.
>>>
>>> And I know this is conspiracy theory, but that's why I think there is
>>> such
>>> resistance to it.
>>>
>>> Since the flaw is required for OAuth to work, companies invested in OAuth
>>> and that profit from OAuth solutions don't want sites behind proxies that
>>> would break OAuth and don't want webmasters to understand they have to
>>> reduce security in order to implement an OAuth solution.
>>>
>>> That's just a suspicion of mine, but I can't think of any other logical
>>> reason as to why a node attribute was chosen as the solution, and why
>>> there
>>> is such resistance to doing it the right way with a header. To me it just
>>> doesn't make sense.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/01/2016 05:45 PM, Zac Spitzer wrote:
>>>
>>> how about rather than requiring this on every <a> why not support a base
>>>> tag directive
>>>> for the whole document i.e. <base rel="noopener">, similar to <base
>>>> target="_blank">?
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Domenic Denicola <d@domenic.me> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> From: whatwg [mailto:whatwg-bounces@lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Ian
>>>>
>>>>> Hickson
>>>>>
>>>>> I believe that's a bit of an overstatement. There are certainly risks
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> involved in window.opener (they're briefly discussed in the spec
>>>>> itself),
>>>>> but it doesn't remove the origin checks.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is the crucial point.
>>>>>
>>>>> Whenever you are discussing a supposed security issue, you need to make
>>>>> clear what the threat model is. That is:
>>>>>
>>>>> - What would be the impact on the victim if the security hole is taken
>>>>> advantage of?
>>>>> - Is this something we are trying to prevent on the web platform?
>>>>>
>>>>> In this case, the impact on the victim (a user of a web browser) is
>>>>> that
>>>>> they could click a link from page A to page B, which opens in a new tab
>>>>> (tab B). Then, tab A could be navigated to a new URL, instead of
>>>>> staying
>>>>> on
>>>>> page A.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is not a big impact. Notably, page B is not able to read any of
>>>>> the
>>>>> content of page A, which might be sensitive. Page B is not able to
>>>>> interfere with the operation of any of page B's scripts. And crucially,
>>>>> when page B navigates tab A to another page, the URL bar of tab A
>>>>> changes
>>>>> to indicate that.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is no desired security guarantee on the platform that we want to
>>>>> prevent pages from directing users to "bad" sites. We count on users
>>>>> inspecting the URL bar to understand what page they are interacting
>>>>> with
>>>>> in
>>>>> a given tab.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, while it might be a bit surprising that suddenly tab A is
>>>>> navigating
>>>>> somewhere else, there is no security issue here, and users are not
>>>>> endangered in any way---at least, not in any more danger than they
>>>>> already
>>>>> are from browsing the web without looking at their URL bar to see where
>>>>> they've ended up at.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>

Received on Friday, 2 December 2016 06:11:54 UTC