[tor-bugs] #33955 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Selecting "Copy image" from menu leaks the source URL to the clipboard. This data is often dereferenced by other applications.

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Tue Apr 21 22:47:55 UTC 2020


#33955: Selecting "Copy image" from menu leaks the source URL to the clipboard.
This data is often dereferenced by other applications.
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Reporter:  peskydan                 |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  defect                   |         Status:  new
 Priority:  High                     |      Component:  Applications/Tor
                                     |  Browser
  Version:                           |       Severity:  Major
 Keywords:  information leak,        |  Actual Points:
  unexpected, Firefox                |
Parent ID:                           |         Points:
 Reviewer:                           |        Sponsor:
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Right-clicking an image and selecting "Copy image" from the context-menu
 leaks the source URL to the clipboard. In many applications, pasting the
 image leads to the URL being dereferenced, and a clearnet web request can
 result, instead of the bitmap simply being pasted. This is dangerous and
 unexpected behaviour that stems from Firefox.

 11 formats are placed on the clipboard during an image copy. 3 of these
 contain the URL, 2 of which contain further tag metadata:

     49318 'HTML Format' - this contains the entire source HTML of the
 <img> element, inside a comment, wrapped in a minimal HTML document, and a
 header containing the offsets

     49419 'text/html' - this also contains the source HTML of the <img>
 element

     49426 'application/x-moz-file-promise-url' - this contains the plain
 source URL.

 While some might argue that this is appropriate in Firefox, it's an
 unexpected information leak in the Tor Browser.

 My suggestion would be to change the menu items to:

 - Copy image
 - Copy image location
 - Copy image as HTML

 **Copy image** would copy only raw image pixels as an uncompressed bitmap.
 This ensures there is no metadata in the image, and also ensures that
 increasingly common things like WebP don't break everything. It also fixes
 unexpected behaviour with respect to dynamically generated or uncached
 images, ensuring that what the user sees is exactly what ends up in the
 clipboard, without any extra web requests in the target application.

 **Copy image location** would copy, in plaintext, the source URL of the
 image.

 **Copy image as HTML** would copy or create a sanitised version of the
 <img> tag (i.e. onclick handlers etc would be stripped, leaving only alt
 text, width and height and perhaps eventually a filtered version of any
 embedded CSS).

 I believe each of those menu options would behave as everyone would
 expect, without any unexpected information leakage issues.

 (I have set severity as major and priority high, since this has the
 potential to deanonymise a user before they realise what's happened, but
 is probably a relatively easy fix. Presumably this would be regarded as
 the most important kind of bug, but I don't know the convention here.)

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33955>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online


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