Re: [g-a-devel]role type - "password-text"

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Tue, 2002-07-30 at 09:56, Peter Korn wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> > On Mon, 2002-07-29 at 06:56, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > > I do believe this is a security bug, my understanding has always been
> > > that a text field should report what is displayed in this case and not
> > > what was typed in.
> > >
> > > Certainly if we expose the password text here it creates very
> > > significant security issues for at-spi and accessibility solutions.
> > 
> >         I'm extremely un-certain that this is a security bug in at-spi, if 
> > we remove all ways of determining what text is in that field, we have
> > screwed with eg. braille displays - that don't speak the string out to
> > the whole room [ not that an a11y desktop user would be using anything
> > but headphones in an office space I'm sure ;-].
> 
> FYI - I know of users who would put their passwords into the pronounciation
> exception dictionaries, so that when read aloud, they would be pronounced
> as a completely different word, thereby confusing anyone who was
> listening...

Yes, this is a clever (and interesting) workaround.  However I think
that for at-spi, exposing the plaintext makes for a too-easily-exploited
hole (since it's very easy to write a utility that snoops at-spi).  

-Bill

> 
> Peter Korn
> Sun Accessibility team