Web code weakness allows data dump on PCs
Source: BBC
Gigabytes of junk data could be dumped onto PCs via a loophole in web code, a developer has found.
The loophole exploits a feature of HTML 5 which defines how websites are made and what they can do.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21628622
Firefox is the only major browser that keeps this from happening.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Windows is a virus.
Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)Where do I go to get that??? Oh wait, nevermind, I know where
Edit: For those of you with browsers besides Firefox who need a hard drive full of cats, here ya go!! Enjoy! (proceed at your own risk!)
http://www.filldisk.com/
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)and not kiddie porn.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)I am totally uninterested in knowing anything whatsoever about the freaking degenerately flaccid junk of Fox (R).
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Hang on, let me install Safari.... wait. Nope.
Opera? Nope.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)I'm surprised to see Chrome vulnerable.
Renew Deal
(81,869 posts)DavidDvorkin
(19,483 posts)According to the article, that's why it's not vulnerable to this exploit.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Xithras
(16,191 posts)In Chrome, Apple Safari, and other browsers (all WebKit browsers) HTML5 local storage is either a separate beast, or is stored as part of the caching system which dynamically scales the disk space to meet current demands. IE is the only major browser that bundles local storage with cookies and cache, and ships with a hard cache limit enabled at 250mb. While the attack may permit the sites to work around the per-site datalimits, the local storage itself should still be subject to that 250mb overall limit. Firefox is the only other major browser that I'm aware of that also makes a maximum data limit available, but it's disabled by default. Browsers like Chrome are capable of having a limit enabled, but it has to be activated using command line switches (!)
Of course, I'm a bit puzzled as to how this works on IE anyway. The HTML5 spec says that localstorage is supposed to be limited per-domain, but Microsoft already went off-spec and made their limit per-origin. This was supposed to limit not only the amount of space each site could have, but also the overall amount of space that can be written by any individual requestor. The OP article makes it sound like Firefox is the only browser that addressed this. Microsoft actually DID address this issue as well, but it sounds like their off-spec "fix" didn't work.
I'm going to have to fire up a VM and test this out. The test in the video was done using Chrome, so I'm really curious to see how IE reacts to it.
On Edit:
Yep, just tried this on a clean Win7/IE9 VM. IE disk usage blew up to the default 250mb overall maximum and stopped dead.
eggplant
(3,913 posts)The concept as described is easy to patch. Browser bashing here is really pretty pointless. Can we move on?
hunter
(38,325 posts)No way am I going to stuff a gigabyte of data through my connection in 16 seconds. And I notice the saturated connection right away.