Open Bug 1997237 Opened 3 months ago Updated 1 day ago

YouTube won't play videos in private window after browsing to yahoo.com in regular window

Categories

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Audio/Video: Playback
Version:
Firefox 144
Platform:
Desktop
Unspecified
Type:
defect
Points:
21

Tracking

()

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: vtwintiger, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:144.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/144.0

Steps to reproduce:

video does play:

  1. launch Fx (regular window)
  2. open private window, click YT video bookmark
  3. click the video play button - video does play

video does NOT play:

  1. launch Fx (regular window)
  2. browse to mail.yahoo.com (I type in the address bar as it is in my history)
  3. open private window, click YT video bookmark
  4. click the video play button - video does not play

I could even open Fx, open private, play the video, switch back to the regular window, browse to yahoo.com and the video would stop playing!

I started seeing this after build 143 and again in 144.
Troubleshooting mode did not fix the problem.
I substituted many other sites for yahoo.com but none reproduced the problem.

<ins>this is the reason I logged this bug</ins>:
How can anything done in a regular window affect what happens in a private window? This could be a serious privacy or security issue.

Note: I fixed the problem by clearing all cookies and data (even though I have "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" on). I still have a copy of the broken profile.

So much for markdown!

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Audio/Video: Playback' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Component: Untriaged → Audio/Video: Playback
Product: Firefox → Core

Now it happened again. In trying to debug, I selectively deleted cache, starting with yahoo.com (forget site) - didn't work; did the same using Manage Data - didn't work. Then, using Manage Data, I cleared all sites - this did work! Then I went to mail.yahoo.com again, logged in. After this the problem reproduced again.

This time clearing cache (even Everything) didn't work to fix it. So there is something very inconsistent about clearing cache.

Points: --- → 21
Hardware: Unspecified → Desktop

So now my Fx is broken w/o an apparent workaround. Maybe it will randomly work after clearing cache, who knows.

Jim, since there is some interaction between regular and private windows, it looks like a potential vector that could be maliciously exploited. I think this bug should be escalated because of that.

Flags: needinfo?(jmathies)
Blocks: media-triage
Flags: needinfo?(jmathies)

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:jimm, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(jmathies)
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