Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
10GB Favicon Bug Crashes Browsers | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 41 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Wednesday June 24 2015, @12:48AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @12:48AM (#200176) Journal

    Once upon a time in 1999, Microsoft released Internet Exploiter number 5 and its users in an comatose bliss started to spew requests for /favicon.ico into web server logs. It was like wtf is that for? and then, purpose? and then, aha eye candy for people that are look-new-shiny-bling-bling.

    As there is a file format called "ICO" perhaps it's time to specify that as the image format? and then the maximum pixel and filesize?
    Seems some browsers have problems displaying large pictures regardless so it could be beneficial to implement some kind of hard limit on images regardless. Like "This image will be 40 000 x 20 000 pixels and using 2.2 GB memory, are you sure you want to display it?" along with free RAM and swap information.

    As for standard committees, Microsoft just steamrolls them.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   4  

  • (Score: 1) by ledow on Wednesday June 24 2015, @02:04PM

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @02:04PM (#200386) Homepage

    If your favicon is over 32Kb, we just don't display it.

    See how long it takes for everyone to shrink their favicons back to a sensible size or feel the wrath of users who "only get the little default icon on your website, but not your competitor".