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Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour.

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On Tue 18 Jan 2022 at 14:46:48 (+0000), Jeremy Nicoll wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2022, at 04:51, songbird wrote:
> > Jeremy Nicoll wrote:
> >> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022, at 05:19, songbird wrote:
> >>
> >>>   you are right, but i just wanted to say that for some sites
> >>> the behavior is to generate a unique file name if they find
> >>> one that already exists with the same name and for other sites
> >>> it is not.  i think this is dependent upon the website designers
> >>> and not firefox.
> >>
> >> Are you saying that code on a webpage can interrogate my 
> >> file system to see whether certain files exist?  I don't like the
> >> sound of that.
> >
> >   you are running the webpage on your browser so it is your
> > own computer and your own program that is doing the accessing
> > just like any other program you run.
> 
> The problem is that a user would normally only expect a browser to
> save a file to the file-system in two cases:
> 
> (a) when the user has explcicitly chosen to download something, and 
>    then chooses where to put it
> 
> (b) when the browser is cacheing content, or manipulating its own
>   config files
> 
> In both those cases it's code written by the browser's developers 
> that's doing the writing.
> 
> The new situation will allow any JS written by any page developer to
> access my files.  I am unconvinced that this will never lead to malware
> doing things to files/folders on my system without my knowledge.
> 
> It's a BIG change to users' expectations of what a browser can do.
> 
> Users with no technical knowledge could get bitten by this.
> 
> > what controls you wish
> > to put on the access to your file system and how you do that
> > is up to you and your own desires and capabilities.
> 
> I don't think it should be up to me.  I'd prefer to prohibit any JS 
> in a browser from doing that.
> 
> > but what i do is set where files are saved in a
> > specific directory and leave it at that
> 
> That works fine while you can be sure that a browser is only 
> saving downloaded files.  What about when if can do anything
> it likes to any file/folder?

Songbird went on to say:

> > if you are running a linux 
> > system then you have the capability of using different users
> > and groups to control file and directory access.  so you only
> > browse using one user and then set up a directory for that 
> > user to save files to and then put stuff there.  then you can
> > make that directory read only to a group and set up another
> > user to go look at the files saved there.  or something like
> > that...

… which is what I do: user "flash" browses all except a few
trusted sites. I can read flash's ~/PDF/, downloads and browser
cache, and after a minute, I own the first two categories,
thanks to cron.

Cheers,
David.

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Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. Kamil Jońca <kjonca@o2.pl> - 2022-01-16 19:50 +0100
  Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2022-01-17 06:30 +0100
    Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. "Jeremy Nicoll" <jn.ml.dbn.25@letterboxes.org> - 2022-01-17 22:00 +0100
      Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2022-01-18 06:00 +0100
        Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. "Jeremy Nicoll" <jn.ml.dbn.25@letterboxes.org> - 2022-01-18 15:50 +0100
          Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-01-18 17:50 +0100
          Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2022-01-18 17:50 +0100
            Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net> - 2022-01-18 19:30 +0100
          Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2022-01-19 13:50 +0100
      Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2022-01-18 17:40 +0100
        Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. "Jeremy Nicoll" <jn.ml.dbn.25@letterboxes.org> - 2022-01-18 17:50 +0100
        Re: Firefox PDF download - strange behaviour. Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2022-01-21 10:50 +0100

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