Security Flaw: Any website can read your clipboard text

[Sudar]

Web sites you visit can retrieve data from your clipboard depending on
your security settings. Go to this page (www.clipboard.googlemyway.com)
and see if anything shows up in the box. If you are using Firefox or
Opera you probably won't see anything. However, if you are using
Internet Explorer then chances are that whatever you last copied into
your clipboard will be displayed.

 

[Lee]

Sudar said:

Web sites you visit can retrieve data from your clipboard depending on
your security settings. Go to this page (www.clipboard.googlemyway.com)
and see if anything shows up in the box. If you are using Firefox or
Opera you probably won't see anything. However, if you are using
Internet Explorer then chances are that whatever you last copied into
your clipboard will be displayed.

That's a pretty misleading subject line.
It should probably read, "If you use Internet Explorer and aren't
careful about your security settings, your data is not secure",
and that shouldn't really be news to anybody.

 

[Matt Kruse]

Web sites you visit can retrieve data from your clipboard depending on
your security settings.

1) This is way, way, way old news.
2) It only affects IE, and only if you have your security settings setup to
allow it
3) It's stupid (IMO) for IE to allow this by default

I once setup a hidden iframe on a page of mine to capture clipboard contents
and save them to my server, without the user ever knowing. I was amazed at
how much conidential information I obtained, including personal emails, urls
(some with embedded logins and passwords), chat transcripts, etc.

I stopped after a while (the 'experiment' got old) but it was enlightening.