Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X • Hacker News Board

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#81

Post by mmastrac » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:29 AM UTC

Fun exploit of this - you can use it to lock up Safari hard:

http://grack.com/hangsafari.html

(not a reduced testcase - it's more of a brute force)

You can also trigger a mailto: link that crashes Mail:

mailto:pete@bar.com?subject=File:///&body=File:///

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#82

Post by Gorbzel » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:30 AM UTC

paulschreiber wrote: post #67

paulschreiber wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because SublimeText doesn't use NSTextFields, and therefore, doesn't use Data Detectors. It's not voodoo.

Seriously, people, learn how to read a backtrace. This is hacker news, not social-media-manager-who-claims-they-are-a-geek news.

Couldn't have said it better.

People act completely stupid when it comes to their OS. HOLY SHIT THERE'S A STANDARD TEXT FIELD CLASS?!?!?! APPLE IS DOOMZ0R3D!! Be a champ and submit these kind of things to your local devs and (as the super "hacker" posters say) carry on...

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#83

Post by antics » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:30 AM UTC

The cause of this bug seems to be the OSX system spell checker; I've crashed a few applications to take a look at the dumps, and so far they common point of failure seems to be that they all have some call to something like `NSSpellChecker`.

In the OP for example:

    6   AppKit                              0x00007fff921dbd1a checkDataDetectors + 536
    7   AppKit                              0x00007fff921d9429 NSSpellCheckerCheckString + 13334
    8   AppKit                              0x00007fff921d5f9f -[NSTextCheckingOperation main] + 152

    7   AppKit                              0x00007fff921d9429 NSSpellCheckerCheckString + 13334

This explanation makes sense to me because the spell checker is integrated very tightly into the user-facing text entry experience across the board in OSX. It is one of the few bits of code that could explain reliable failures across applications that we've been seeing.

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#84

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:31 AM UTC

speeder wrote: post #61

I would appreciate if someone can explain to me why I am feeling a urge to visit the office tomorrow only to see stuff crashing on my OSX workstation.

That feeling was me for 10+ years, mainly teenage ones. Not sure where it went, but I prefer working stuff these days.

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#85

Post by d0m » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:36 AM UTC

It's a bug, it happens, let's move on.

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#86

Post by krickle » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:42 AM UTC

niggler wrote: post #53

[deleted] wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I try to avoid upgrading OSX. When a new version comes out, I wait for a hardware refresh and just get a new Mac (Apple has a nasty habit of disregarding backwards compatibility, and it's really nice to be able to do stuff like run older powerpc programs) EDIT: the [deleted] comment was 'I miss snow leopard'

I'm not "upgrading" to Lion ever. Their next software update will determine whether or not I buy a Mac again.

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#87

Post by gabrielgironda » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:43 AM UTC

Figured you can crash Safari on page load with this. http://gironda.org/this_will_crash_safari.html

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#88

Post by jneen » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:44 AM UTC

File:///

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#89

Post by akadien » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:45 AM UTC

akadien wrote: post #11

mmastrac wrote: post #4

This also happens in the address bar of Chrome. Great fun.

No crash for me. Google must have patched it.

Geesh, tough crowd. No sense of humor.

(Chrome version 24.0.1312.57 really doesn't crash for me on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Safari and TextEdit do, though.)

Re: Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

#90

Post by jclem » Sat, Feb 02, 2013, 4:48 AM UTC

Does not crash:

- 'File:///' typed slowly

- 'File://a' typed slowly

- 'File:// a' typed at any speed.

Does crash:

- 'File:///' typed quickly

- 'File://X' (X being any non-whitespace character) quickly

- 'File://X ' (any number of non-whitespace followed by any whitespace) at any speed