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SVGs that feel like GIFs

(koaning.io)
518 points cantdutchthis | 2 comments | 08 Jul 25 08:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.414s | source
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xml ◴[08 Jul 25 17:49 UTC] No.44502333[source]▶
A word of caution: There are SVGs which can freeze a page, so make sure that you do not link to any third party SVGs. This is a known bug, but both the Google Chrome and Mozilla team do not want to fix it.

Here is an evil example SVG for demonstration.

DON'T CLICK THIS LINK UNLESS YOU WANT TO RISK CRASHING YOUR BROWSER!

https://asdf10.com/danger.svg

replies(2): >>44502579 #>>44504026 #
pcthrowaway ◴[08 Jul 25 20:58 UTC] No.44504026[source]▶
Wait so are recursive XXE attacks like (I'm assuming) this one possible on Github READMEs? Or have they somehow mitigated them?
replies(2): >>44506359 #>>44508031 #
nneonneo ◴[09 Jul 25 09:52 UTC] No.44508031[source]▶
It's recursive, but not XXE. It is 20 layers of nested SVG groups, where the first group contains 10 blue circles, and every subsequent group contains 10 of the previous group. This would render as around 10^20 blue circles.
replies(1): >>44509240 #
1. pcthrowaway ◴[09 Jul 25 12:30 UTC] No.44509240[source]▶
SVG is XML-based, unlike HTML which follows the SGML spec

From curling the malicious page you can also see:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
        <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="1000" height="1000">
replies(1): >>44513617 #
2. nneonneo ◴[09 Jul 25 18:57 UTC] No.44513617[source]▶
Yes, SVGs are XML-based and may be vulnerable to generic XML-based XML external entity (XXE) or exponential entity expansion attacks, but this particular malicious SVG is using SVG-specific features to create the resource exhaustion.