1554751 - Consider to change the spoof value of window.devicePixelRatio

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Security, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Ethan Tseng [:ethan]]

The Window property devicePixelRatio returns the ratio of the resolution in physical pixels to the resolution in CSS pixels for the current display device. This value could also be interpreted as the ratio of pixel sizes: the size of one CSS pixel to the size of one physical pixel. In simpler terms, this tells the browser how many of the screen's actual pixels should be used to draw a single CSS pixel. [1]

When the pref "privacy.resistFingerprinting" is set as true, we spoof the value of window.devicePixelRatio as 1, regardless of the real ratio. This behavior increases the protection of user privacy by reducing the entropy of the browser client fingerprint. However, it causes a side-effect that some web pages become blurred with the spoofed value, such as Google Spreadsheet. [2]

Changing the spoof value as 1.5 or 2 might resolve the blur issue, but we need to make sure such change won't cause other side-effects or breakage. This bug is filed to track the investigation work.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/devicePixelRatio
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1532859

Comment 1

[Tim Huang[:timhuang]]

Unassign myself because I am no longer actively working on this.

Comment 2

[:nickname]

According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/devicePixelRatio, changing it to 2 shouldn't result in any breakage, since if it's implemented as in the example (which might be the only proper way), it should only influence the actual size in memory rather than the display size. That is, the memory usage will be doubled in some steps of the rendering pipeline.

It's a performance penalty for the 96 dpi devices only. On Mobile devices and hidpi laptops the resource usage is expected.

On the other hand, if it really degrades the user experience such explicitly, it should be split from the privacy.resistFingerprinting and be privacy.resistFingerprinting.spoofDevicePixelRatio

Comment 3

[Thorin [:thorin]]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1582021#c42

4 months ago

FWIW, returning 2 is being used in Tor Browser (and Mullvad Browser) 13 - currently in alpha, these are the ESR115 based releases. Once it percolates a little in release channel with no issues

And 4 months later, with this in release, there have been no reported side-effects or breakage. **It is time to land this bug :) **

This should solve Bug 1582021, Bug 1533787, Bug 1532859, Bug 1428331 and of course this one. RFP is not front facing nor officially supported in Firefox, the patch is very simple and the risk low to non-existent

pinging tom

Comment 4

[Stelian Ionescu]

I'd say "let's ship it" :)

Comment 5

[Pier Angelo Vendrame]

Attachment: Bug 1554751 - Change the RFP value of devicePixelRatio to 2. r?#gfx-reviewers

Comment 6

[Tom Ritter [:tjr]]

I'm not convinced there will be no breakage. It seems likely to me that users on monitors where the dPI is 1 will see icons rendered twice as large or something.

But if Tor is shipping it, I'm okay uplifting it.

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/2218b1b338de
Change the RFP value of devicePixelRatio to 2. r=gfx-reviewers,nical

Comment 8

[Cristian Tuns]

Backed out for causing mochitest failures in test_bug418986-1.html

• Backout link
• Push with failures
• Failure Log
• Failure line: TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | dom/base/test/test_bug418986-1.html | window.devicePixelRatio should be equal to 1 - got 2, expected 1

Comment 9

[Pier Angelo Vendrame]

Sorry, I ran a testbuild but somehow I missed this failure or it didn't catch it.
Amended the commit to update the test (but I need someone to please land it again for me).

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/4026fef492b7
Change the RFP value of devicePixelRatio to 2. r=gfx-reviewers,nical

Comment 11

[Cristian Tuns]

Landed successfully.

Comment 12

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4026fef492b7