Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Javascript application framework 'extjs' and privacy

Out of the box, extjs version 2.0.2 leaks privacy information.

If you fail to change the value of Ext.BLANK_IMAGE_URL to something local, it will default to http://extjs.com/s.gif. At first this might not seem bad, but remember that every time this image is fetched the referring URL is sent to the extjs.com web server.

At worse, this is a minor information link. Depending on what you might place in your URL line, this could be a major issue.

I have posted a comment on the extjs forums, but so far the developers don't see the problem. They say it is well documented in their FAQ, and that it is documented in the API docs.

I would prefer they opt for a warning message saying "You did not set ..." rather than leaking information by default. I'll probably have to post a CERT on this one.

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