The HTML5 specification is complicated. I've been an author on it, and even I couldn't tell you all the weird little gotchas it contains. Between that and "idiosyncratic" browser engines, it's a wonder the world wide web works at all. Let's talk about the humble <meta> element. As its name suggests, it contains metadata about…
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tl;dr Google forgot to renew a domain used in their documentation. It was mildly embarrassing for them. And possibly a minor security concern for some new G-Suite domain administrators Background Choosing a good example domain, to use in documentation, is hard. You want something which is obviously an example, so that users understand they have…
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Here's a quick write-up of a minor XSS (Cross Site Scripting) vulnerability on the website of Three.co.uk - one of the UK's mobile providers. A brief recap... Most websites have a search function. If you search for something which cannot be found, the site will often say "No results found for XYZ." If we can…
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There's a new bug bounty provider in town! The Belgian company Intigriti. This is a quick write-up of how I found a trivial bug in their own system. The EU has announced that it is providing funding for bug bounties on critical open source projects. They've split the programme between HackerOne and Intigriti. I signed…
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Imagine the scenario. You're trying out some cool new Twitter app. It asks you to sign in via OAuth as per usual. You look through the permissions - phew - it doesn't want to access your Direct Messages. You authorise it - whereupon it promptly leaks to the world all your sexts, inappropriate jokes, and…
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CloudFlare claim they want to secure the web - but they seem more interested in tracking their customers than giving them decent security. Upon registering with the Internet giant, users are encouraged to confirm their email addresses. So far, so standard. This is the confirmation message CloudFlare sends out: Looks good! Hey! I wonder where…
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Look, I know your company wants metrics. I know your boss wants to see the exact percentages of people who click on links in your emails. Your sales team are desperate to track conversions. Someone wants to optimise your funnel for reasons which are unclear to you, a lowly engineer. So you make the mistake…
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I've found an interesting, but low severity, way for a malicious user to selectively deny access to specific GitHub issues and Pull Requests. This doesn't affect the whole site - just targeted pages. It doesn't require elevated permissions, nor any special skills. This is just GitHub punching itself in the face. Here's how it works.…
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