Re: Netscape communicator 4.x Javascript security flaw

[metal_hurlant () YAHOO COM (Metal Hurlant)]

Netscape has a "persistent" navigator object, which means that any data put
in the window.navigator object will be accessible to every other window as long
as the browser is running. This is slightly worse than non-persistent cookies
since it works across domains. (not by much.. advertisers didn't wait for this
feature to track users from different sites)

Any window that somehow gets an handle to another window can look at it.
If you try to explore the objects inside that window, you'll see pretty much
every global function and variable defined on that window. But you cannot see
"sensitive" objects like document, history, location, etc..
This is mostly an attempt at not breaking compatibility with scripts developed
with previous versions of Navigator: Every object can be accessed except those
known to be sensitive.
It can be a problem if a script happens to copy sensitive data into global
variables. But you cannot use it to automatically grab form data as was implied
on the nsSecurityFlaw1.html page.

I'm surprised to see this working on a https page. A page loaded from a secure
server should be treated as a secure container ( just like pages containing
signed javascripts ) and should refuse any access from external source.

http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/jssec/contents.htm

Regards,
Henri Torgemane

On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Ahmed Ghandour wrote:
> I found one problem wich affect probably all the Netscape browser 4.x if you want to know more details please check 
> out in http://people.magnet.com/~ghandour/
>
> Ahmed Ghandour