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Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

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Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#11

Post by jws »

_bxg1 wrote: post #8
acwan93 wrote: post #3

I really hope we don’t start getting into a parade of dialogs going “X app requests permission to use Y”. I get why it’s important from a privacy-perspective, but most people aren’t going to care. They’ll just mash the “Allow” button until they get what they want.

I don't see why this even needs a dialog. What legitimate reason is there for an app to see my clipboard without me pasting anything?

The app might be implementing the paste function. The most common use case of copying and pasting text could probably be hidden inside the standard text fields, but consider images, sounds, or custom data types. The app needs to grab these off the clipboard and do something with them and will be triggering the action from some custom user interface element. Even for text, a terminal emulator or word processor is not going to be using a standard text field as the target.

Most apps could probably live happily with there being an entitlement for ‘unsecured clipboard access’ to enable anything but text into a text field.

Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#12

Post by _bxg1 »

shoyer wrote: post #10
_bxg1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this even needs a dialog. What legitimate reason is there for an app to see my clipboard without me pasting anything?

Google Maps does this (at least on iOS), and it's actually pretty convenient. As soon as I click on the search bar, I can immediately click on my copied text to go there without doing the "tap and hold" dance.

Maybe the iOS keyboard itself needs a "just tap" paste button? That would seem generally-useful.

Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#13

Post by _bxg1 »

jws wrote: post #11
_bxg1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this even needs a dialog. What legitimate reason is there for an app to see my clipboard without me pasting anything?

The app might be implementing the paste function. The most common use case of copying and pasting text could probably be hidden inside the standard text fields, but consider images, sounds, or custom data types. The app needs to grab these off the clipboard and do something with them and will be triggering the action from some custom user interface element. Even for text, a terminal emulator or word processor is not…

The OS could provide a dedicated button of its own for pasting images, etc. It could be recognizable and standard and apps could embed it as needed.

The key is that apps shouldn't have silent, arbitrary clipboard access. The user should have to do an action for the clipboard's contents to be transferred. The only way to prevent abuse is for a system-provided widget to be the one making the actual API call.

Another option would be to provide apps an API call that opens a system "paste dialog", asking the user, "Paste X into this app?". This would have the added bonus of giving the user a preview of what they have in their clipboard before actually performing the paste. It could even show a history of the last several copied items in case they want to paste one of those instead, which would be a genuine productivity-booster.

Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#15

Post by katsura »

_bxg1 wrote: post #6

> Apps on iOS and iPadOS have unrestricted access to the system-wide general pasteboard, also referred to as the clipboard. Yikes. This is horrible, and really it's unacceptable given Apple's privacy rhetoric. Even the web doesn't have this vulnerability. And it's easy to fix, too! Why in the world should an app be able to see the clipboard? It should only see the text I enter into its fields (via pasting or otherwis…

Browsers use it to help you with the copied links. When you click into the URL bar they offer you to jump to the previously copied link right away.

Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#17

Post by wool_gather »

I wouldn't be surprised if the apps themselves were not directly responsible here -- that is, the code that's written directly by the app developers.

Instead, it may very well be be some analytics/marketing SDK that has been included in the app because of a business request. These have no privilege separation: they run their code in the same context as the code that the app developers wrote. (Consider the example of games with no text UI; unless they're truly spying on their users, what would they get from doing this?)

I've said before, this SDK privacy hole is something we need to be very aware of as engineers and push our product/marketing folks to recognize as well. I would love to see Apple address it too. (On the other I have no idea how they would.)

Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#18

Post by m463 »

jws wrote: post #11
_bxg1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this even needs a dialog. What legitimate reason is there for an app to see my clipboard without me pasting anything?

The app might be implementing the paste function. The most common use case of copying and pasting text could probably be hidden inside the standard text fields, but consider images, sounds, or custom data types. The app needs to grab these off the clipboard and do something with them and will be triggering the action from some custom user interface element. Even for text, a terminal emulator or word processor is not…

Apple could require the paste dialog before the clipboard was accessed.

Complicated buffer access would require an "allow" dialog.

I am probably oversimplifying things.

Re: Popular iPhone and iPad Apps Snooping on the Pasteboard

#19

Post by aaomidi »

katsura wrote: post #15
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

> Apps on iOS and iPadOS have unrestricted access to the system-wide general pasteboard, also referred to as the clipboard. Yikes. This is horrible, and really it's unacceptable given Apple's privacy rhetoric. Even the web doesn't have this vulnerability. And it's easy to fix, too! Why in the world should an app be able to see the clipboard? It should only see the text I enter into its fields (via pasting or otherwis…

Browsers use it to help you with the copied links. When you click into the URL bar they offer you to jump to the previously copied link right away.

Should be a permission.
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