w3c / w3c/webcodecs

VideoDecoder API may expose the underlying buffer pool size

Open
#569 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

privacy-tracker
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
1.3k
Forks
194
Avg merge
1d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Description

Web pages may be able to compute a video decoder buffer pool size by not releasing VideoFrame of a given decoder and feeding the decoder data to decode until it stalls. As such, this can be a fingerprinting vector.
The same issue applies to Media Capture Transform for peer connection tracks (and camera tracks as well though camera access is gated by a permission).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the VideoDecoder API behavior described here, then examine the same concern for Media Capture Transform on peer connection and camera tracks. Reproduce whether retaining VideoFrames and feeding decoder data until it stalls reveals the buffer pool size, then determine the required mitigation or API change.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
api, security, web-dev
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.