Bug 1618740 - anonymous authentication dialog is security risk
Summary: anonymous authentication dialog is security risk
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: thunderbird
Version: 28
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Gecko Maintainer
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2018-08-17 13:10 UTC by John Dennis
Modified: 2019-05-28 23:08 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2019-05-28 23:08:36 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Screenshot of dialog (25.82 KB, image/png)
2018-08-17 13:10 UTC, John Dennis
no flags Details

Description John Dennis 2018-08-17 13:10:16 UTC
Created attachment 1476623 [details]
Screenshot of dialog

An anonymous authentication dialog will pop up in the middle of my work requesting a password for an account. The problem is the dialog does not identity which application is asking for the password or why. Furthermore the dialog is not associated with any window or workspace I'm currently working in. There is no way to identify who is asking for security credentials.

One should never enter a password unless you know where that password is going.

I was only able to identify it was Thunderbird by using xwininfo to get the process id belonging to the dialog.

Attached is a screen shot of what pops up.

Comment 1 Niels de Vos 2018-08-20 17:27:07 UTC
This happens to me as well. I only use Thunderbird ti manage my calendars, so it is likely related to that.

At first, I could just click [OK] and everything was working. At the moment, it seems to be stuck in a loop, and no matter how often I click [OK], the request comes back. Sometimes there are seconds delay between popups, sometimes they come immediate. The calendar I try to re-enable does not get shown in the mean time.

To me this popup is not only a security risk (I did notice it was from Thunderbird, using XFCE here). With these popups I can not access my calendar through Thunderbird and that is quite a critical task for the application.

Comment 2 John Dennis 2018-08-21 03:05:07 UTC
Re comment #1: Yes, I have the same problem, no matter what I do the dialog keeps popping up.

One of the fundamental problems is the dialog offers zero information as to what account and for what purpose it's asking for a password. Even if I trusted the dialog I couldn't possibly know what password to use because I use a unique password for every account I have.

Like Niels I suspect it's a calendar account. But given I have multiple google accounts that I use with Lightning (on the assumption it's a calendar account), how am I supposed to know which account it's asking about?

At an absolute minimum the dialog needs to identity who is asking for the password and for what account.

Comment 3 Ben Cotton 2019-05-02 19:16:57 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 28 is nearing its end of life.
On 2019-May-28 Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for
Fedora 28. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases
that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as
EOL if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '28'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 28 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 4 Ben Cotton 2019-05-02 20:26:16 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 28 is nearing its end of life.
On 2019-May-28 Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for
Fedora 28. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases
that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as
EOL if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '28'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 28 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 5 Ben Cotton 2019-05-28 23:08:36 UTC
Fedora 28 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2019-05-28. Fedora 28 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.