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"Spy pixels in emails have become endemic"

1. Stephane Bortzmeyer (stephane (a) sources.org)

It is not just a Web problem, it also plagues email. (I'm glad there
is no inline images in Gemini.)

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56071437

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2. Petite Abeille (petite.abeille (a) gmail.com)



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 09:28, Stephane Bortzmeyer <stephane at sources.org> wrote:
> 
> (I'm glad there is no inline images in Gemini.)

There are:  data:image/png;base64...

?0?

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3. Stephane Bortzmeyer (stephane (a) sources.org)

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 09:44:16AM +0100,
 Petite Abeille <petite.abeille at gmail.com> wrote 
 a message of 10 lines which said:

> There are:  data:image/png;base64...

You cannot turn that into a "spy pixel" since there is no extra
network request.

PS: how many clients display that?

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4. Petite Abeille (petite.abeille (a) gmail.com)



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 10:19, Stephane Bortzmeyer <stephane at sources.org> wrote:
> 
> You cannot turn that into a "spy pixel" since there is no extra
> network request.

Inline image was the topic.

> 
> PS: how many clients display that?

Mine does.

?0?

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5. Petite Abeille (petite.abeille (a) gmail.com)



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 10:19, Stephane Bortzmeyer <stephane at sources.org> wrote:
> 
> You cannot turn that into a "spy pixel" since there is no extra
> network request.

C: gemini://example.org
S: 30 gemini://example.org/trackerid
C: gemini://example.org/trackerid
S: 20 text/tracked

?0?

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6. Louis Brauer (louis (a) brauer.family)

Am Mi, 17. Feb 2021, um 10:38, schrieb Petite Abeille:
> C: gemini://example.org
> S: 30 gemini://example.org/trackerid
> C: gemini://example.org/trackerid
> S: 20 text/tracked

A "data:base64..." embedded image, if there is such a thing in Gemini, 
doesn't trigger a network request.

- Louis

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7. Petite Abeille (petite.abeille (a) gmail.com)



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 14:52, Louis Brauer <louis at brauer.family> wrote:
> 
> Am Mi, 17. Feb 2021, um 10:38, schrieb Petite Abeille:
>> C: gemini://example.org
>> S: 30 gemini://example.org/trackerid
>> C: gemini://example.org/trackerid
>> S: 20 text/tracked
> 
> A "data:base64..." embedded image, if there is such a thing in Gemini, 
doesn't trigger a network request.

The above was to illustrate the use of redirects to uniquely tag URLs, 
without any use consent. 

Nothing to do with data: URI. 

Even though a data URI could contains resources which could trigger network activities.

?0?

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8. Louis Brauer (louis (a) brauer.family)

Am Mi, 17. Feb 2021, um 14:58, schrieb Petite Abeille:
> >> C: gemini://example.org
> >> S: 30 gemini://example.org/trackerid
> >> C: gemini://example.org/trackerid
> >> S: 20 text/tracked
> > 
> The above was to illustrate the use of redirects to uniquely tag URLs, 
> without any use consent. 
> 
> Nothing to do with data: URI. 
> 
> Even though a data URI could contains resources which could trigger 
> network activities.

Hm, I'm not a security or browser developer but do you have an example of 
a "data URI" that would trigger network activities in Gemini? I thought 
that Gemini spec was designed in a way to prevent that from happening.

Also: do you know any Gemini client that inlines images from non-local 
domains without explicit consent from the user? If so, we should open an 
issue because that is clearly against the spirit of Gemini. 

Regarding the request/response workflow you describe above: tracking 
happens already at the first request (and thanks to IPv6 every client has 
one or more unique IP addresses, and thanks to TLS every client has a 
unique signature in the request payload). 

- Louis

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9. Petite Abeille (petite.abeille (a) gmail.com)



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 15:19, Louis Brauer <louis at brauer.family> wrote:
> 
> I thought that Gemini spec was designed in a way to prevent that from happening.

More of an aspiration than a reality.

> Regarding the request/response workflow you describe above: tracking 
happens already at the first request (and thanks to IPv6 every client has 
one or more unique IP addresses, and thanks to TLS every client has a 
unique signature in the request payload). 

Q.E.D.

?0?

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10. Nathan Galt (mailinglists (a) ngalt.com)



> On Feb 17, 2021, at 6:19 AM, Louis Brauer <louis at brauer.family> wrote:
> 
> Am Mi, 17. Feb 2021, um 14:58, schrieb Petite Abeille:
>>>> C: gemini://example.org
>>>> S: 30 gemini://example.org/trackerid
>>>> C: gemini://example.org/trackerid
>>>> S: 20 text/tracked
>>> 
>> The above was to illustrate the use of redirects to uniquely tag URLs, 
>> without any use consent. 
>> 
>> Nothing to do with data: URI. 
>> 
>> Even though a data URI could contains resources which could trigger 
>> network activities.
> 
> Hm, I'm not a security or browser developer but do you have an example 
of a "data URI" that would trigger network activities in Gemini? I thought 
that Gemini spec was designed in a way to prevent that from happening.

SVG images would work nicely in data: URIs.

They can have JavaScript in them.

If I were making a graphical Gemini browser, I?d just decode the base64 
text and then hand the entire blob off to some SVG library, which, for all 
I know, might run the JavaScript.

Or it might not. I don?t remember seeing any SVG-decoding libraries that 
depended on Node.

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11. Louis Brauer (louis (a) brauer.family)

Am Do, 18. Feb 2021, um 04:24, schrieb Nathan Galt:
> SVG images would work nicely in data: URIs.
> 
> They can have JavaScript in them.

Damn, just found that:
https://davidwalsh.name/javascript-in-svgs

Didn't realize that SVGs are just part of the DOM and can contain and run 
arbitrary JavaScript. I was a huge fan of SVGs until now :-).

Thanks for bringing that up.

- Louis

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12. Oliver Simmons (oliversimmo (a) gmail.com)

If the library does run the JS (or make external requests in another
form) and not have an option to disable it I would consider that a bug
myself.
Myself I would always use separate files for SVG and images.

I think for data: URIs clients shouldn't process ones that have the
possibility to make network requests without the user explicitly
saying yes to it.
The spec kinda falls apart here as data: isn't a network protocol :/
> clients MUST NOT automatically make any network connections as part of 
displaying links whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol

How would data: even work in gemini text anyway?
Link lines are only supposed to be for *URLs* not URIs

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13. Petite Abeille (petite.abeille (a) gmail.com)



> On Feb 18, 2021, at 14:35, Oliver Simmons <oliversimmo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> How would data: even work in gemini text anyway?
> Link lines are only supposed to be for *URLs* not URIs

Check the last 18-24 months of the mailing list archive :)

https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/

For example:

gemini://gemi.dev/gemini-mailing-list/messages/001144.gmi

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14. John Cowan (cowan (a) ccil.org)

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 5:39 AM Louis Brauer <louis at brauer.family> wrote:


> Didn't realize that SVGs are just part of the DOM and can contain and run
> arbitrary JavaScript. I was a huge fan of SVGs until now :-).
>

There is a formal profile for SVG-without-DOM-or-CSS-or-JS called "SVG
Tiny", which comes in 1.1 and 1.2 flavors (1.2 added a few features that
are still considered safe).  If you want your graphical Gemini browser to
render such images, outfit it with an SVG Tiny renderer.  I don't know of
any fully conformant SVG Tiny 1.2 renderer at the moment, but svgirl claims
to convert any conformant input to a list of lines and curves to draw,
which can then be passed to any graphics library for actual rendering.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Ahhh, I love documentation.                           --Stephen C.
Now I know that I know, and why I believe that I know it.
My epistemological needs are so satisfied right now.
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15. easrng (easrng (a) gmail.com)

On February 18, 2021 3:24:34 AM UTC, Nathan Galt <mailinglists at ngalt.com>
wrote:
> ... for all I know, might run the JavaScript.

SVGs when rendered as images (on the web) can't make network calls or run
JS. I assume libraries expose this option.


SVGs can be used in web browsers several ways. These are the places they
can run JS.

- They can be loaded standalone with no HTML (by browsing directly to the
file)
- They can be inline as an <svg> tag
- They can be <embed>ded

They can also be used as an image, and can't run JS or make network
requests (ex. load fonts) if used this way
- They can be used as an <img> src
- They can be a CSS background

CSS and animations work everywhere.


-- 
? <https://www.google.com/teapot>
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