[HN Gopher] Looks like you are typing while in full screen
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Looks like you are typing while in full screen
        
       Author : jereees
       Score  : 90 points
       Date   : 2021-04-24 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (imgur.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (imgur.com)
        
       | jereees wrote:
       | Mentioned in another comment but this message showed up while
       | watching a Youtube video in Safari on iPadOS 14.5. It was
       | triggered by tapping the screen a few times with an Apple Pencil
       | 2nd generation, I didn't manage to make it show up a second time
       | after choosing to stay in full-screen.
        
       | ogre_codes wrote:
       | I've seen this pop up a few times, usually when scrubbing video.
       | I thought it previously gave you the option to continue so maybe
       | it's changed a bit.
       | 
       | I think it's not a bad idea in terms of security, and likely its
       | a response to an actual attack vector. But maybe there should be
       | a way to disable it for specific sites or just have a warning
       | bar.
        
         | jereees wrote:
         | Interesting. I didn't know you could trigger it by scrubbing,
         | did you use your finger? This pop up showed up while I was
         | randomly tapping the screen with the Apple Pencil.
        
           | ogre_codes wrote:
           | Yes, but it could have been that I was tapping to specific
           | portions of the time line. I can't honestly recall if I was
           | tapping or sliding or both.
        
       | ksaj wrote:
       | On the Mac, you can switch desktops even while YouTube is full
       | screen. In that case, YT just shows up as an additional desktop
       | in the switcher. I wonder if this YT "feature" would react
       | against doing that.
       | 
       | It doesn't if you have dual monitors and are typing on the other,
       | which I do rather often.
       | 
       | I'm not particularly inclined to reconfigure to see if that's
       | still the case when switching desktops on a single-monitor setup,
       | since OSX mangles the desktop layouts if you unplug a monitor and
       | reboot.
        
         | spicybright wrote:
         | For myself, macos is really good about monitor layouts and
         | keeping everything the same when plugging/unplugging monitors.
         | 
         | What version are you running, I'm running catalina.
        
       | oakwhiz wrote:
       | Modern computing is in need of the "Secure Attention Key"
       | concept. A dedicated user input which deliberately has no other
       | function than to escape any kind of virtualization or input
       | capture, and ensure that subsequent communications goes directly
       | to a trusted part of the operating system.
        
         | spijdar wrote:
         | Doesn't Ctrl+Alt+Delete still serve this function pretty well
         | on Windows? I'm not sure how impossible it is to block/bypass,
         | but it seems to almost always work despite input capturing.
        
           | spicybright wrote:
           | In my experience, generally yes. It's a good escape hatch to
           | unstuck a system.
        
       | gulbanana wrote:
       | This feature has existed for several years.
        
         | jereees wrote:
         | What stood out the most to me in this particular pop up was the
         | wording. It seemed unusually natural speech. Do you known of
         | any other places on iOS that have a similar feeling?
        
       | beirut_bootleg wrote:
       | Such a pointless popup. We enter personal information into
       | websites every day. Want to prevent this from happening? Make it
       | the home page for every browser.
        
         | jereees wrote:
         | I agree it feels rather dated. Can't hurt to have it I guess,
         | also I couldn't manage to trigger it a second time after
         | choosing to stay in full screen. Could be that now Safari
         | remembers my choice for youtube.com.
        
       | akersten wrote:
       | What prevents a non-fullscreen site from just faking a keyboard
       | with `position: fixed; bottom: 0;`? Really weird stance they're
       | taking here. Kind of excludes an entire class of web applications
       | (full screen games) from being usable on iPad, almost as if the
       | real motivation is to drive you to the app store...
        
         | klyrs wrote:
         | On my phone, I use an obscure keyboard with a custom theme --
         | good luck faking that. Doesn't help your average user, though.
        
           | jereees wrote:
           | Fair enough. An attacker wouldn't need to fake your keyboard
           | though, it's probably just enough to trick you into thinking
           | you are entering sensitive information into a legit website
           | while in reality it's made to look that way but still using
           | normal text inputs.
        
         | jtth wrote:
         | URL bar at the top, UI chrome is different in full screen vs
         | windowed. (Full screen media playback on iOS has OS-level
         | controls at the top.)
        
         | realusername wrote:
         | > almost as if the real motivation is to drive you to the app
         | store...
         | 
         | Every "security" feature on Safari points into harming web apps
         | so you are on the right tracks...
        
         | __s wrote:
         | What prevents them is that it'd be within the confines of a
         | website, so url bar tells you you're on a website & not the
         | appstore asking for permission
         | 
         | This gets into sandboxes needing to have "sacred pixels" as a
         | border to prevent the sandbox tricking the user into thinking
         | they exited from the browser
         | 
         | This issues goes way back: imagine if after executing a program
         | on CLI instead of closing it gave you a fake shell, where you
         | eventually went about your day until you had to type your
         | password into sudo..
         | 
         | Of course, your point about the app store is good motivation to
         | address this, whereas consoles don't go about offering much
         | protection there
        
           | toxik wrote:
           | Which is a good reminder that password entry is terrible
           | security wise. With macOS, you can sudo authenticate with
           | your Apple Watch, which is really nice.
        
             | majewsky wrote:
             | If you're concerned that a script's root password prompt
             | may be a forgery, you can run "sudo -v" before executing
             | the script.
             | 
             | For background, there is a convenience feature in sudo: It
             | only requires your password prompt if you have not had a
             | successful sudo invocation in the same terminal in the last
             | X minutes (5 minutes, I think? not sure on the exact
             | value). "sudo -v" is a special invocation which does not
             | actually execute any command, but it renews your 5-minute
             | lease. ("sudo true" is effectively equivalent, though not
             | idiomatic.)
             | 
             | So if you're executing a short script that needs sudo, run
             | "sudo -v" before running the actual script. Then you know
             | that if a root password prompt pops up again, it's not
             | really sudo who's asking.
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | > If you're concerned that a script's root password
               | prompt may be a forgery, you can run "sudo -v" before
               | executing the script.
               | 
               | The bigger problem is that even without sudo or your root
               | password, malicious scripts can do a lot of damage. ie.
               | they can add a fake sudo to your .profile, so you next
               | time you try to do "sudo -v" your password still gets
               | stolen.
        
             | jereees wrote:
             | Is this a feature built in into the OS? I have only heard
             | of some third party code to allow that...
        
           | akersten wrote:
           | > , so url bar tells you you're on a website
           | 
           | Is this even the case anymore? On Android, all my URL bars
           | peel up into the top of the screen as I browse, and I'm
           | pretty sure a website can capture the vertical swipe/arrange
           | an inner-scrolling element to make it very difficult to
           | quickly get the URL bar visible again.
           | 
           | I think that would be enough to trick most users. This seems
           | like an unnecessary limitation
        
             | saurik wrote:
             | This is iOS, though, where the URL bar is always at least
             | minimally present.
        
               | t0mas88 wrote:
               | On safari, but not on for example Edge for iOS or Chrome
               | for iOS.
        
               | ogre_codes wrote:
               | Is this security feature present on Edge or Chrome on
               | iOS?
        
               | jereees wrote:
               | Huh. I'm surprised apple didn't make it a requirement
               | before approving those apps into their store given how
               | strong their stance on privacy is.
        
           | rsa25519 wrote:
           | > This issues goes way back: imagine if after executing a
           | program on CLI instead of closing it gave you a fake shell,
           | where you eventually went about your day until you had to
           | type your password into sudo..
           | 
           | As a fun fact, even worse might be a program maliciously
           | aliasing sudo in ~/.profile
        
             | spicybright wrote:
             | That's a spooky one, although I've never heard of that
             | happening in practice before.
             | 
             | But then again how, how someone know if that happened!
        
       | chmod775 wrote:
       | This makes no sense any way I look at it.
       | 
       | "youtube.com" could show you a fake keyboard anyways and why
       | can't it trick you with a real keyboard.
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | Two situations, how do you distinguish them?:
         | 
         | 1. The username/password form of your bank, as shown in your
         | browser.
         | 
         | 2. A pixel-perfect fake of your bank as it would look if you
         | were to go there directly in your browser, including the
         | browser UI, except you're actually looking at a full-screen
         | image displayed on a random scammer website, and you already
         | were in the fake when you typed the bank domain name into the
         | fake address bar on the fake UI.
        
           | dcow wrote:
           | How about a site that says it will help you log into your
           | bank and secure your bank credentials?
        
             | ben_w wrote:
             | Because your hypothetical is something a user can learn to
             | avoid, whereas my hypothetical is one where literally no
             | user could distinguish real from fake without assistance
             | from the OS or the browser.
        
               | dcow wrote:
               | What about Plaid? Should users avoid that?
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | If you care about security, yes. It operates identically
               | to a phishing service, complete with a logos/imagery to
               | suggest you're sending your credentials to your bank
               | rather than a third party. What's worse is that as far as
               | the user's concerned, they're inputting their credentials
               | into the consumer site[1], as you can see in the demo:
               | https://plaid.com/demo. This is as opposed to something
               | like google oauth where you enter your credentials on
               | accounts.google.com only.
               | 
               | [1] ie. you're on site A, which wants access to your
               | account details on bank X. when you're entering your
               | details, the address bar shows site A's domain, not
               | plaid.com or bank X.
        
               | guipsp wrote:
               | ...Yes? The point is that you should be aware of who
               | you're giving your information to.
        
               | dcow wrote:
               | Plaid is a valid service that helps glue bank APIs
               | together. Why should it be avoided?
               | 
               | I am not arguing your point strictly. But the problem in
               | general can only really be solved with education. Users
               | should always know who they're giving credentials to. A
               | technical measure like not allowing keyboard input in a
               | full screen browser is a leaky stop gap. The full screen
               | app could just as well show its own pixel perfect full
               | screen keyboard and trick users to tap it.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | > The full screen app could just as well show its own
               | pixel perfect full screen keyboard and trick users to tap
               | it.
               | 
               | You should've led with that, it's a much better question
               | than your others on this thread.
        
         | dcow wrote:
         | Exactly, it could just show a real keyboard, tell you it's got
         | a new discount partnership with Pornhub premium and catch you
         | trying to log in.
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | And it will say youtube.com at the top of the screen, which my
         | real bank app does not.
        
       | dcow wrote:
       | Isn't this an accessibility concern for someone who isn't able to
       | interact with a touch screen?
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | If you're unable to interact with a touch screen, you're
         | unlikely to trigger the popup for typing on the touch screen.
        
           | jereees wrote:
           | You're forgetting about dictation and head-based input
           | controls.
        
             | tedunangst wrote:
             | Your dictation input is unlikely to trigger the typing on
             | touchscreen pop up.
        
               | spicybright wrote:
               | And you can always hit system buttons anyways with
               | accessibility tools.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-04-24 23:02 UTC)