1612650 - Shift clicking navigation buttons in private browsing opens content in non-private browsing window

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect, P2)

Description

[Wesley Branton]

As reported by a user on the support forums, there appears to be an issue when shift clicking the navigation buttons in private browsing mode.

To reproduce the issue, open a new private window and navigate to a few different websites. Then, hold down shift on the keyboard and click the back button on the toolbar. Since the history of that tab is tied into private browsing, it would be expected that the shift shortcut would open a new private browsing window.

However, it opens the page in a new non-private browsing window. This issue is a potential privacy bug, since the page would then be logged into the user's history and cache/cookies would be saved.

I've been able to reproduce the issue on Windows 10, but I assume the bug happens on all systems.

Comment 1

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

That is very unfortunate, I agree.

The issue is that duplicateTabIn does not pass the private option to OpenBrowserWindow if the tab is private. This can be checked using e.g. PrivateBrowsingUtils.isBrowserPrivate(tab.linkedBrowser), see https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/cc0f9906505d0ffa0d3a29a80142379e21cb5fb2/toolkit/modules/PrivateBrowsingUtils.jsm#39

Comment 2

[Theo Ottah]

Hi, I’d like to pick this up.

I will probably need some help writing tests but I’ll contact you when I get to that point.

Comment 3

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Awesome, thank you!

Comment 4

[Theo Ottah]

Attachment: Bug 1612650 - Shift clicking navigation buttons in private browser opens content in private window r=johannh

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/91eefbd9625c
Shift clicking navigation buttons in private browser opens content in private window r=johannh

Comment 6

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/91eefbd9625c

Comment 7

[Maria Berlinger [:mberlinger]]

I've managed to reproduce this issue on an affected Firefox nightly from 2020-01-31 on Windows 10x64.
This issue is verified fixed on Firefox 76.0b4 using Windows 10x64, Ubuntu 18.04x64, macOS 10.15.