Firefox security question

[Bruce Pieterse]

On Sat 22 Oct 2011 16:37:30 SAST, R Kimber wrote:
> I understand that if you are attempting to open a local file from a remote
> site then it won't work - it would be a significant security breach if links
> on remote sites could open or execute files on a local machine.
>
> However, I want to be able to open my own local files that are on my own
> machine from web pages that are local to, and created on, my machine - which
> seems to me not to be a security problem. Indeed, this used to work before
> I upgraded to 11.10.
>
> How may I configure Firefox so that it displays these local pages using
> links of the form:
> <a href="file:///home/web/filename.htm">local file</a>
>
> I tried the two options I could find using Google, namely creating user.js
> and putting:
> user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "localfilelinks");
> user_pref("capability.policy.localfilelinks.sites",
> "http://local website here");
> user_pref("capability.policy.localfilelinks.checkloaduri.enabled",
> "allAccess");
>
> and also editing the appropriate security setting in about:config, but
> neither will work.
>
> Any ideas about how I can do this?
>
> - Richard.

Hi Richard,

I have tested a pure HTML site on my side, and could navigate to other 
pages. The pages were served from my home directory and not another 
users directory (in your case /home/web). The issue you might be having 
is related to the permissions of that directory. Can you try move the 
contents of that directory over to your home directory? Perhaps it 
would be beneficial to setup apache on your local machine to serve your 
content, however this is not really required for what you are trying to 
achieve.

Regarding remote content from a local file, this is possible and not 
really a security issue. Executing remote scripts such as Javascript 
could potentially be a security problem but it all depends on what is 
in the javascript file itself.

I hope I interpreted you problem correctly, but perhaps you can provide 
me with more information on exactly what you want setup and how you 
want it to work.

No extra configuration was required to run the local files in firefox.

-- 
Best of luck,

Bruce