[Gimp-developer] Deleting on images with alpha channel does not delete

[Hanno Böck <hanno hboeck de>]

Hello,

I've been asked to bring this discussion to this mailinglist.

There's an issue with GIMP that can lead to unexpected disclosure of
private information if one tries to use GIMP to remove private data
from images.
The problem is that when someone "deletes" something with GIMP in an
image with an alpha channel it's not actually deleted, the content is
just set to be fully transparent. This can of course trivially be
reversed.

A typical situation where this might become problematic is when somene
makes a screenshot for e.g. a social media post and wants to remove
something that is private, e.g. a name/address/creditcard number etc.

Will Dormann who works for CERT/CC has reported this as an issue[1],
however it was closed arguing that this is expected behavior.

FWIW I agree with Will Dormann here that this is very surprising
behavior, and thus it should be considered dangerous and should be
changed. He also told me he tested multiple other popular graphics
editors and GIMP is the only one with this behavior.

(Also FYI I am planning to write an article about this for Golem.de.)

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/4487

-- 
Hanno Böck
https://hboeck.de/