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Re: Exploits in websites due to buggy input validation where mozilla is at fault as well as the website.


From: Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 03:03:54 +1200

Barry Fitzgerald wrote:

I think that the best solution might be to display a dialogue box before 
it tries to fix the tags stating that the page contains potentially 
unsafe incomplete tags and asking whether the browser should repair them 
or not.

Nope -- _VERY_ bad idea.

Idiot users want to blow both their feet off.

Asking them "do you want a chance to blow your feet off?" only slows 
the inevitable slightly, never prevents it.

The correct solution to all such problems is simply to reject the 
content as malformed.  And guess what will happen when you do that?  
Several really crappy web design products will disappear because the 
folk using them will drop them because no-one can see their pages _and_ 
the rest will suddenly become very inetrested in producing properly 
compliant content, as they should have been from the outset.

Playing "guess what the moron really meant" is a recipe for being 
screwed, so let's get over the previous "need" to "see it at all cost" 
and get some sense back into what folk are doing...


Regards,

Nick FitzGerald

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