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428 points coronadisaster | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jamesgeck0 ◴[] No.23679063[source]
> Web MIDI API - Allows websites to enumerate, manipulate and access MIDI devices.

This API is actually a bit horrifying from a security perspective. In addition to allowing you to use MIDI keyboards as input devices on websites, it also allows websites to send binary firmware updates to MIDI devices. The reason is that it's common to use custom firmware to backup/restore settings and enable neat effects and functionality on MIDI devices.

Mozilla's engineers have reasonably pointed out that an attacker utilizing Web MIDI could use MIDI devices as a stepping stone to launch an attack against the user's PC outside of the web sandbox. One such attack might be by reprogramming the device to appear as a standard USB computer keyboard and "typing" commands to the host.

At least one well known manufacturer has vouched for the technical safety of their musical instruments, noting that they're physically designed in such a way that the MIDI firmware can't alter USB firmware. But there's no way to know that every MIDI device has been similarly well designed.

As neat as Web MIDI is, I think Mozilla and Apple probably made the right security call here.

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58

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henriquez ◴[] No.23679633[source]
Fun fact: for quite a long time Chrome skipped over the user permission step in the Web MIDI spec, always allowing access and silently giving ad networks a list of connected USB MIDI devices with no user consent:

https://www.obsessivefacts.com/blog/2018-10-20-chrome-allows...

Here's what appeared on porn site xhamster.com once newer versions of Chromium got around to implementing the permission check (SFW-ish):

https://www.obsessivefacts.com/images/blog/2020-04-04-the-ja...

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tyingq ◴[] No.23679844[source]
Guessing it was for additional browser fingerprinting.
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polycaster ◴[] No.23680317[source]
That seems a bit far fetched.
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tyingq ◴[] No.23680449[source]
Not sure why that's more odd than other crazy fingerprinting techniques actually in use. Keep in mind no midi devices would need to be present for fingerprinting. Different failure modes, etc.

Especially in the porn industry where the end users are likely using incognito mode or a VPN.

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microtherion ◴[] No.23681713[source]
I still don't understand how WebMIDI would be used for fingerprinting of the vast majority of users who don't have any MIDI devices connected to their machine.
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1. tyingq ◴[] No.23681992{3}[source]
Here's a jsfiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/wj69s4fh/

I get different types of failures and messages from different versions of Chrome, Firefox, and IE. None of which have any midi devices. Those errors, or the structure of the resulting object if it succeeds, are all fingerprint inputs.

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2. amatecha ◴[] No.23682156[source]
Yeah, ran it in Chrome, the browser didn't say a thing whatsoever and I see MIDIAccess object in JS console. Nice to know the browser just allows this entire API by default.