279558 - Warning for URL that includes an unnecessary username show urlescaped usename

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect)

Description

[Roland]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

The username bits of the warning dialog show username part as urlescaped string.
This is rather unfreindly towards the enduser, since essentially all the aspects
of urlescaping should be transparent to any end-users.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to http://[e-mail]/

Actual Results:  
The secutity warning (confirmation) dialog shows username in the message as
"mozilla%2Eorg".

Expected Results:  
It should read "mozilla.org" instead.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 2

[Roland]

When I tried this now, I noticed no security warning.

However - the username part of the url in the addresbar was escaped for some
unknown reason.

Comment 3

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

I believe this alert comes from core.

Comment 4

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

I'm not the right assignee for this bug. This is not SSL, but plain http. This seems to be a phishing warning message.

The error message I get is:
mozilla/netwerk/locales/en-US/necko.properties:SuperfluousAuth=You are about to log into the site \"%1$S\" with the username \"%2$S\", but the website does not require authentication. This may be an attempt to trick you.\n\nIs \"%1$S\" the site you want to visit?

Over to Necko. Confirming, since I can reproduce.

Comment 5

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

setting to all as I get this on Linux

Comment 6

[benc]

I think it was this way, for reasons I cannot remember. (It was 3 years ago!)

I think the escaping prevents some types of phish/spoof combinations...

Comment 7

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

Yeah, so here's the story:

This warning came out of the popularity of phishing emails that used links like:

http://paypal.com:[e-mail]/

The user:password@host URL syntax allowed malicious links to put safe-looking content right at the front of the URL, where even halfway sophisticated users might mistake it for the legitimate site.  That was the reason for the dialog, but probably also the reason for the escaping.

In this situation, we're dealing with something very fishy - a URL offering a username/password to a site that doesn't want it, and including special characters in that user/pass string.  If we drop the url escaping, we let that dialog say "paypal.com" which is exactly what a phisher would want us to do, because that is the kind of thing that (for people who don't read dialogs very closely) might look like confirmation that they really are going to paypal.

Considering that this should happen rarely-to-never for legitimate sites (which shouldn't be asking for passwords they don't need, and which won't get the dialog if they actually DO need it) and considering the potential for exploitation by malicious sites (however minor) - I am marking this WONTFIX.