How does Wikipedia prevent people from uploading malicious images onto its website?
-
My friend who is a programmer was explaining how it is possible to put your own computer at risk of viruses, etc. by viewing maliciously-crafted images. How would someone prevent this? The following is an except from our conversation from his point of view. "Basically, when you view an image on your computer, a low-level program has to run to turn the image from a stream of bits into signals for your monitor to turn on or off pixels. There have been a few cases in recent memory where that low-level decoder program has a flaw where a certain sequence of bits will cause it to do something it's not supposed to. Aside, I think, back in the iOS 2 days, someone used a flaw like this to allow people to jailbreak their phones. Your virus-checker program usually only runs on files you save to your computer; it does not usually run on images embedded in a webpage or linked-to directly. In other words, just by attempting to view the file, you could infect your computer. Even then, if the CMS tries to process the image, then the server software will run. If the image was maliciously crafted to attack the server software instead of your computer software, you would only notice a broken image; but the websites servers would be compromised."
-
Answer:
First answer and I'm not a security expert. Convert all the non-JPG and PNG images into JPG or PNG. Those which are already JPG or PNG could be decoded into a bitmap (a 2D array of pixels) using a secure decoder and then re encoded into a new JPG or PNG file.
Ramchandra Apte at Quora Visit the source
Related Q & A:
- How do you get people to advertise on your website?Best solution by Yahoo! Answers
- How can you prevent your ears from popping on an airplane?Best solution by Yahoo! Answers
- How do you prevent your name from appearing in an email with Outlook Express (ver. 6?Best solution by Yahoo! Answers
- How can I prevent varicose veins?Best solution by Yahoo! Answers
- How can I prevent people from seeing my msn profile?Best solution by au.answers.yahoo.com
Just Added Q & A:
- How many active mobile subscribers are there in China?Best solution by Quora
- How to find the right vacation?Best solution by bookit.com
- How To Make Your Own Primer?Best solution by thekrazycouponlady.com
- How do you get the domain & range?Best solution by ChaCha
- How do you open pop up blockers?Best solution by Yahoo! Answers
For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.
-
Got an issue and looking for advice?
-
Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.
-
Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.
Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.