Re: JavaScript exploits via source code disclosure

[Christian Sciberras <uuf6429 () gmail com>]

OK, scratch "plain text" and instead "human readable code".
Because, let's face it, obfuscators don't do much in the face of
real/determined hackers/attackers.




On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:37 AM, Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>wrote:

> Christian Sciberras wrote:
>
> > This is a seriously flawed argument.
>
> Correct...
>
> > JS == plain text. Full Stop.
>
> ...but that has nothing to do with the reasons why.
>
> First, because it is simply wrong (FSVO "plain text").
>
> For just one trivial example, the following Javascript doesn't look
> anything like anything normally considered "plain text":
>
>   http://cecil.auckland.ac.nz/scripts/menu.js
>
> yet it runs as designed (and there's no need for anyone to provide an
> explanation of what it is, what it does, how it works, etc).
>
> In the contexts in which Javascript is typically relevant, and
> specifically in this case, the colloquial "plain text" is generally
> expected to be material that can be safely transferred across the
> internet under text/plain character encoding.  While the above example
> may survive that on a binary-clean transport (like HTTP) it just might
> not on other common internet protocol transports.
>
> And, FWIW, the ECMAScript standard says, in the first sentence of
> Section 6 ("Source Text"):
>
>   ECMAScript source text is represented as a sequence of characters
>   in the Unicode character encoding, version 3.0 or later.
>
> Again, close-minded as it is, Unicode and "plain text" typically do NOT
> mean the same thing on the Internet (an oversight that will probably be
> "fixed" within another generation or so).
>
> I think you confused "plain text" with "necessarily scrutable", or
> similar.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Nick FitzGerald
>
>
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