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10GB Favicon Bug Crashes Browsers

posted by janrinok on Tuesday June 23 2015, @02:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the simple-but-effective dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A Favicon bug lets Chrome and Firefox download huge favicon files to the point they crash the browser:

Andrea De Pasquale posted a tweet saying "Weird 64MB favicon.ico turning out to be a TAR backup of the whole WP site, downloaded by every browser passing by."

This creepy bug makes Chrome and Firefox download the huge favicon files to the point till they crash the browser. The silliest part is that the users are not at all aware of this download as it is all done in the background and who is truly to be blamed for this.

[...] Technically, the existence of this bug is no surprise, as there is no rule of standard anywhere which states that the favicon files have to be below a specified limit. As a matter of fact, the favicon files need not have to be .ico files. A lot of GIF, PNG or JPEG files are used with popular websites, and there are no limitations linked to the file's extension.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Tramii on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:16PM

    by Tramii (920) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:16PM (#199955)

    It is trivial to crash mobile safari, just spend ten minutes on Facebook.

    I just tested this on my iPhone and determined that it was not "trivial". I normally use the Facebook app and was curious to see if I could indeed crash Safari by clicking around on things for 10 minutes. Everything worked fine and mobile Safari did not crash. Of course, I don't have 10,000 friends constantly spamming me with worthless posts, so maybe that's the difference. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:40PM

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:40PM (#199966) Journal

    I tried totally ignoring facebook. I still do for the most part, but too many people that I actually care about use it. So, I end up checking it once every couple of months, sometimes more frequently. Plus, my wife is on it, nearly constantly, so I don't really need to check it very often.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @08:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @08:08PM (#200067)

      ...ignoring facebook. I still do for the most part, but too many people that I actually care about use it.

      Sounds like you care about the wrong kinds of people{grin}. I ignore fb and don't miss much of anything, my friends do the same.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:57PM (#199978)

    Try Zerohedge [zerohedge.com] or the The Green Site [slashdot.org] on the latest generation of iPod if you want to experience a crash. Both dump more ad-tracking code than Safari can handle (or than anyone should have ever reasonably been expected to handle).

    • (Score: 2) by Tramii on Tuesday June 23 2015, @06:29PM

      by Tramii (920) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @06:29PM (#200019)

      Fair enough. But I don't think I would sweat it if my MP3 player choked while trying to render a bloated website.