1331314 - About: links all end nowhere, or worse

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox for iOS :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Dan Jacobson]

There is a History command in the menus, but one cannot instead go there via any URL. If one types in about: anything, poof the URL gets erased.

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

I'd like to know and understand the use case for typing 'about:history' to access history instead of following through the UI.

Comment 2

[Dan Jacobson]

OK I was wrong. There is no about:history in the Linux Firefox, so there
shouldn't be one in the iOS version.

However,

currently even 'about:about' goes to a private website. Apparently
treated as a search or something.

So it seems like a security risk.

the about: links end up at private websites or being erased.

On Linux:

About About

This is a list of “about” pages for your convenience.
Some of them might be confusing. Some are for diagnostic purposes only.
And some are omitted because they require query strings.

    about:
    about:about
    about:accounts
    about:addons
    about:buildconfig
    about:cache
    about:checkerboard
    about:config
    about:crashes
    about:credits
    about:debugging
    about:devtools-toolbox
    about:downloads
    about:healthreport
    about:home
    about:license
    about:logo
    about:memory
    about:mozilla
    about:networking
    about:newtab
    about:performance
    about:plugins
    about:preferences
    about:privatebrowsing
    about:profiles
    about:rights
    about:robots
    about:serviceworkers
    about:sessionrestore
    about:support
    about:sync-log
    about:sync-tabs
    about:telemetry
    about:webrtc
    about:welcomeback


Please make sure each one goes somewhere safe also on iOS, or at least a
page that says 'not implemented yet'. Thank you.

Comment 3

[Dan Jacobson]

The security risk:

People hear "In Firefox go to about:xxxx and do yyyy to accomplish zzzzz".
And it works. "I even saw my friend do it".
But when I did it, I got a virus.

Well they go to about:xxxx and in fact it is not a page of Firefox, but
a private website.

Nobody heard that on some versions of Firefox, they might be private webpages.

Comment 4

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

IIRC we only support about:home and maybe about:mozilla currently. We definitely need to revisit adding support for the various about: URLs. I'll put a bug on file for this feature.

Comment 5

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

In the short term, having these all go to a safe place would be a good start.

Comment 6

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

Moving to tracking+ for investigation/breakdown

Comment 8

[James Hugman [:jhugman] [@jhugman]]

Not working on this currently.