This is exactly why I have been pushing in every forum I can, and
sending feedback to Apple, for the past several months, urging that
they back away from the increasing integration between the browser
and other applications. Having a single set of bindings for trusted
and untrusted sources is why Internet Explorer and Outlook have
been security nightmares for most of the past decade.
I can understand Microsoft doing this: they have political reasons
for "integrating" the desktop and the browser (they're not good
reasons... trying to weasel out of an agreement with the DoJ is
never a good reason). I can't understand Apple, though: there
should be at least *two* unrelated sets of bindings... one to be
used for applications that work with local documents and one for
applications that work with untrusted documents... and the bindings
for applications that work with untrusted documents should be
*absolutely* minimal.
In fact, by default and in the absence of explicit uuser action
nothing should ever be transferred from an untrusted document to
another application, or any integration of trusted and untrusted
namespaces. That includes:
Helper application for URL protocols (eg help:)
Helper applications for mime types (eg video/windows-media)
Helper applications for file extensions (eg .wma, .zip)
Internet-enabled disk images and installers.
If the target application is not known to be suitable for handling
untrusted data, it must not be passed untrusted data.
If an application is known to be suitable for handling untrusted
data, it must not be presented with helper applications that aren't
similarly trusted.
This is a really basic security principle, one that nobody I know
would have imagined would be commonly violated until Microsoft not
only kicked it over but refused to pick it up again. For gods'
sake, folks, don't accept the same insanity from Apple, and don't
let Apple get away with a one-shot patch just for this specific
instance of the problem... that way lies the
Outlook-exploit-of-the-week syndrome.
Comment statistics for Peter da Silva on the Making Light blog
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Peter da Silva:
Show all comments by Peter da Silva.