[Fwd: Re: Cross-Site Request Forgeries (Re: The Dangers of Allowing Users to Post Images)]

From: Peter W (peterwat_private)
Date: Sun Jun 17 2001 - 09:22:23 PDT

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    Regarding IMG tags in HTML email, here is a good point I received off-list.
    The sender did not wish to post directly, but approved forwarding this note.
    
    -Peter
    
    ----- Forwarded message (anonymous, forwarded with permission) -----
    
    Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 22:55:41 +0200
    To: Peter W <peterwat_private>
    From: <anonymous>
    Subject: Re: Cross-Site Request Forgeries (Re: The Dangers of Allowing Users to Post Images)
    
    On 2001-06-15 at 09:26 -0400, Peter W gifted us with:
    >               I wonder how it would work in HTML mail clients, though? You
    > could restrict to the sender's domain, but email is the easiest thing in
    > the world to spoof. (And an effective attack vector, especially against
    > things like messageboards that expose email addresses.) HTML email is just
    > evil evil evil. I can't see much need for HTML email to reference *any*
    > external documents, or to allow, as Jay Beale suggested, the use of things
    > like META refresh tags to effect client-pull CSRF attacks.
    
    Personally, I loath HTML email.  However, surely a better approach for
    this is simply to restrict IMG links by insisting that the source be
    inline to the email.
    
    RFC 2112, multipart/related.  Require that email IMG URLs start "cid:"
    in order to be automatically rendered.  Whether or not to _allow_ the
    rendering of other IMGs is a more contentious issue.
    
    (Just one of those ideas which I've had floating around for a while,
     mainly to stop tracking of who's reading spam HTML email)
    
    ----- End forwarded message -----
    



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