Found the error Not allowed to load local resource: file:///etc/passwd
while looking at infosec.pub’s communities page. There’s a community called “ignore me” that adds a few image tags trying to steal your passwd file.
You have to be extremely poorly configured for this to work, but the red flags you see should keep you on your toes for the red flags you don’t.
If you find something, report it. Don’t experiment on the public.
https://www.bugcrowd.com/resources/guide/what-is-responsible-disclosure/
Holy shit this is kind of unsettling. Though I would expect ALL major browsers to reject reading any local files like this… would this kind of thing actually succeed somewhere/somehow?
If you ran your browser as root and configured your browser to load local resources on non-local domains maybe. I think you can do that in chrome://flags but you have to explicitly list the domains allowed to do it.
I’m hoping this is just a bad joke.
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Is this, by any chance, originated from the sub called
ignore me
? In that case is probably my bad because is set as the image of the channel. I was playing with lemmy in the previous version and forgot about it, sorry.I created that channel to investigate why the lemmy instance was hanging every time there was a symbol in the URL, added that URI as icon for fun and forgot about it.
That alert appears because your browser is trying to load an image with that path, nothing dangerous or remotely exploitable, don’t worry.
Edit: I removed it so you shouldn’t see the alert anymore.
P.S. no, it’s not trying to steal anything, it’s your browser trying to load that file as an image but instead of being let’s say this url:
https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/c0e83ceb-b7e5-41b4-9b76-bfd152dd8d00.png
(this sub icon) , it’s this onefile:///etc/passwd
so you browser is doing the request to your own file. Don’t worry, nothing got compromised.But… why? Why even put that URL there? Even if it was most likely harmless for all users, this still looks like an attempt at data exfiltration.
Because I wanted to try if others URI schemas were supported instead of http / https. file:// was a valid one. Don’t worry, the day an attempt of data exfil will happen, you will not see it though your console logs.