1127522 - Removal of screensharing whitelist

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Graveyard :: Screen Sharing Whitelist, defect)

Description

[Martin Thomson [:mt:]]

This reason the screensharing whitelist exists is the risk to the integrity of unrelated sites.  In many ways, it gives a site access to something that only an add-on can get.  So sharing Firefox is the baby brother of installing an add-on.  The risk of sharing other applications is far more manageable.

What I would like to see from the Firefox screensharing UX is the following:

1 - Firefox doesn't appear in the list by default
2 - Whole-desktop sharing doesn't appear in the list by default (it might contain a Firefox window)
3 - There is some special process for users to signal to Firefox that they want to share Firefox
4 - There is some way for a user to discover the above process when they are presented with the screen sharing doorhanger; the same discovery process is probably necessary to explain why Firefox isn't on the list

Platform needs to help here by providing a way to filter Firefox from the list of windows based on whether this special signal has been created by the user.

Doing just 1&2 alone removes a lot of the incentive to use the whitelist, but until we have 3&4, there is probably a case for retaining the list, solely for access to sharing Firefox.

Comment 3

[Potch [:potch]]

Trying to understand: a whitelist would still required to allow users to share their browser? What would be the flow for an informed user who wishes to share their entire desktop?

Comment 4

[Potch [:potch]]

It's been 8 months without resolution here. I understand the security risks, but I worry we're seeing a closed whitelist as "good enough" for the time being.

Comment 5

[Martin Thomson [:mt:]]

I share that concern.  I believe that the resolution is blocked on UX resources.  I will re-raise this with the security team, who are working with UX on new permissions flows.

Comment 6

[Paul Maddison]

In the mean time is it possible for you guys to approve some of the white listing requests that are currently requested? I raised Bug 1201832 for whitelisting of our service www.circuit.com about a month ago. I don't want to have to delay firefox support because we don't have this in place.

Comment 7

[Scott Macpherson]

Does anyone own the Screen Sharing Whitelist component? There are about 20 unconfirmed bugs [1], all of which appear to have come from the Bugzilla template [2] provided on the Mozilla wiki [3] (and possibly elsewhere).

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?component=Screen%20Sharing%20Whitelist&product=Firefox&bug_status=__open__
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/form.screen.share.whitelist
[3] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Screensharing

Comment 8

[Sara]

Since this is still open, could someone take a look a our whitelisting request, too? We're eager to get FF support implemented, and happy to answer any questions you may have. Here's the ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1240199.

Comment 9

[Sara]

Hi there -- bumping this thread again to see if someone can review our whitelist request? Would be much appreciated!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1240199

Comment 10

[paul.leo.steinberg]

I strongly urge you to not approve any more whitelist-addition requests. Every single entry in the whitelist is a punch in the face of the open web and creates the next walled garden after privileged app in Firefox OS.

Comment 11

[David Jameson]

(In reply to paul.leo.steinberg from comment #10)
> I strongly urge you to not approve any more whitelist-addition requests.
> Every single entry in the whitelist is a punch in the face of the open web
> and creates the next walled garden after privileged app in Firefox OS.

As much as I'd prefer not to have a whitelist, right now it is the only method available to us (having users edit about:config isn't really practical for the average user). We reported bug 1244765 over 5 months ago to whitelist www.groupworld.net, but it is still UNCONFIRMED.

Comment 12

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

FIXED for 52 by the work that went into bugs this depends on.