Re: [Public WebGL] Proposals for two new WebGL extensions

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Benoit Jacob <bjacob@mozilla.com> wrote:

On 05/10/11 02:38 PM, Mo, Zhenyao wrote:

I wrote up drafts for two possible WebGL extensions: WEBGL_debug_shaders
and WEBGL_debug_gpu_info.

https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/registry/trunk/public/webgl/extensions/proposals/WEBGL_debug_gpu_info.html
https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/registry/trunk/public/webgl/extensions/proposals/WEBGL_debug_shaders.html

WEBGL_debug_shaders exposes the translated shader source.
WEBGL_debug_gpu_info exposes the unmasked VENDOR and RENDERER strings
from underlying graphics driver.

I believe these two extensions provide important information to WebGL
developers. However, as stated in the drafts, both extensions should
only be available to privileged code in a browser, not the regular
content due to user privacy concerns.

I'm OK with the two extensions as currently drafted; just a couple of remarks:

*WEBGL_debug_gpu_info might be better named WEBGL_debug_renderer_info (or see below, WEBGL_privileged_renderer_info) ? Also, it says that that info should not be exposed to unprivileged content, so should the WebGL spec also be updated to be consistent with that? Currently the WebGL spec does not mention the concern about these strings. Also, I wonder if PRIVILEGED would be a better word than UNMASKED, so it would tell in a more explicit and neutral way what the difference is with the current strings from the spec. Similarly, the extension might be better named WEBGL_privileged_renderer_info?

* WEBGL_debug_shaders might not be a specific enough name? How about WEBGL_get_translated_shader_source or some such. The text says that this should not be exposed to unprivileged content because this could be used to identify the GPU. Personally, my concern is a bit different. I'm not that much concerned about this particular privacy issue as it doesn't seem to expose a lot more information than we already expose (through getShaderInfoLog + getParameter + UA string), and doesn't make it more convenient to obtain. What I'm more concerned with is that it exposes precisely which workarounds we use, so if an attacker was fuzzing our ANGLE workarounds to find corner cases where we miss a workaround, that could be handy.

How is that any different from today? If an attacker wants to find out which workarounds we use, at least for Firefox and Chrome they can just download the source and find out. Yes this makes it slightly easier, they don't have to compile themselves and add a single printf, but it doesn't expose anything they couldn't already get.

Cheers,
Benoit

Comments are welcome.

Mo

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