Apple declined to implement 16 Web APIs in Safari due to privacy concerns

> 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

I'm curious now that I read this, this means that web midi can access the virtual midi devices created under alsa on linux also? Which means if you have it routed to other software using Jack or aconnect, websites could send midi notes directly into whatever software your midi device is routed through?

So theoretically then, could a Jack aware payload be created that runs in the background, say disguised as a vst or ladspa plugin and when a user browses a malicious site, this site could, recognize the malicious midi device, create connections to other software and gain access through possible buffer overflows or other things?

It seems like a stream of midi notes could itself possibly cause a buffer overflow in certain programs. Muse and rosegarden are a bit buggy as is and frequently crash for me. From what i can tell there's a lot of midi aware audio software that likely contains a bunch of avenues for exploits and when you throw virtual midi devices into the mix capable of doing far more than hardware midi devices...