579652 - Events have incorrect time stamps

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 77992

(Core :: DOM: Events, defect)

Description

[Jim Williams]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) FirePHP/0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) FirePHP/0.4

According to both the DOM specification and the Firefox page https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/event.timeStamp, an event time stamp gives the ellapsed time in milliseconds since the dawn of the current epoch (1/1/1970).  However, on my computer, the elapsed time is only since the last reboot of my computer.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Load the attached file.  
2.  Check that its source code does what it does
3.  Follow the simple instructions given in the file
4.  See if you see what I'm seeing!
Actual Results:  
    Date.now(): 1279380866994
    event.timeStamp:  3094687
    Difference: 1279377772307
    Difference as a UTC string: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:42:52 GMT

Expected Results:  
    Date.now(): 1279380866994
    event.timeStamp:1279380866981
    Difference: 11 [approximately]
    Difference as a UTC string: 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

The workaround is to add a separate user-supplied timestamp to the event object.

Comment 1

[Jim Williams]

Attachment: Test file illustrating the bug and supplying test data

Comment 2

[Jim Williams]

This bug is a potential security concern in two cases:

1.  If I'm a hacker who just installed a patch on your computer, and it won't take effect until you reboot, I can write a script that lays low until it has a chance to finally thank you for rebooting.

2.  Slow memory leaks and similar security flaws become more exploitable the longer a computer is running.  So knowing how long the machine has been up sheds light on when to attack.