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The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

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121–130 of 198 posts

Re: The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

#123
post #118

It freezes a Pixel 10 on Chrome, Webviews and Brave..! I tried several webview-based browsers, Chrome, and Brave, with them the phone completely freezes (except that the audio keeps going for a bit). I tested webview browsers because by chance the first place I ran it on was Telegram's internal browser (on which the phone does freeze). It doesn't do anything on Firefox though, and weirdly enough not even on the Chrom…

pixel 9 fold with Graphene, nothing significant in vanadium (after manually enabling JS)

Re: The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

#126

Tried it and now I cant boot even in safe mode. I love it

are you saying that it corrupted the OS install / bricked your Mac?

I guess so. I tried safe Mode, deleting chrome via terminal in recovery. Mac stops rendering as soon as I enter my disk password and it continues to load the system. Now in recovery trying to reinstall lol

Re: The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

#127

This has been around since 2011 when WebGL shipped. It's documented in the spec. It's a self correcting problem. You go to a site, it freezes your machine, you never visit the site again. No data is stolen, no privacy is lost. All that happens is the perp loses any audience. Turning off WebGL = no more Figma, no more Canva, no more Google Maps. A few self correcting sites seem acceptable. Evidence, it's been 15 years…

Do you think a regular user knows how to block a specific website or never click a link leading to it again? And what about the ads people, adding such a thing if you don't load their ads? I think this point of view is making it a bit too easy.

As someone who supports some bottom of the barrel "regular users".. they aren't monkeys. They have brains that function enough to process "oh, I shouldn't do that again".

Re: The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

#128

Back in the 90s when the web was non-commercial and fun, I added a "Don't Click Me" link that loaded a 'browser test' page (after a series of "are you really really sure?" dialogs) that exploited every historical browser bug I could find. Infinite popups, inescapable dialogs, ActiveX quirks, various hangs and crashes, the works. If it didn't crash your computer, it eventually displayed a single popup that said "Congr…

I remember in the 2000s, Dattebayo fansubs had a custom 404 page (for anyone trying to download an episode before they published it I guess), that would do similar. Endless popups, a really bad full volume audio loop, and every other trick to make it impossible to close the page. Was quite the jumpscare.

Re: The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

#129
post #110

> Just hope that your browser doesn't automatically reopen the same tab when it starts up again Busted. My browser is configured to do just that.

Unplug your ethernet cable?

Most Macs don’t have ethernet anymore.

Re: The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac

#130
post #110

> Just hope that your browser doesn't automatically reopen the same tab when it starts up again Busted. My browser is configured to do just that.

Chrome asks whether to reopen windows if it didn't exit normally. Safari appears to just YOLO it. Don't know about Firefox.

It asks.
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