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Optimizing for "simple" for the sake of robustness is exactly backward. > visible and understandable False. Something is neither visible nor understandable if
by fouric 6y ago
Optimizing for "simple" for the sake of robustness is exactly backward.
> visible and understandable
False. Something is neither visible nor understandable if it's misleading - which file extensions are. There are absolutely no guarantees that a file extension will match file contents, and that assumption can cause security risks - like in this article.
An actually good alternative is to encode file type as metadata, instead of inside the file contents or file-name, and then configure viewers to display it. That, while not "simple", is also visible and understandable to the user, while simultaneously being safe.
- lmm 6y ago> There are absolutely no guarantees that a file extension will match file contents, and that assumption can cause security risks Only in software that ignores the extension. > An actually good alternative is to encode file type as metadata, instead of inside the file contents or file-name, and then configure viewers to display it. That, while not "simple", is also visible and understandable to the user, while simultaneously being safe. Metadata can be just as wrong as a file extension, and is generally far less visible.
- kergonath 6y ago> Only in software that ignores the extension No, only in software that blindly follows file extensions.
- lmm 6y agoThe problem is that the text editor ignored the extension of the txt file. That's what lead to unsafe behaviour - the user thought the file was fine to open because the extension was txt, and improving users is not practical. The exact same thing would happen with metadata - indeed file extensions are just a form of metadata - if the metadata says this is a text file but the application ignores it, we would have the exact same issue.