zlacker

>>fugled+(OP)
While cool, technically… From a security perspective today I learned that TrueType fonts have arbitrary code execution as a ‘feature’ which seems mostly horrific.

>>electr+4e
Not really, no more so than a random webpage running js/WASM in a sandbox.

The only output from the WASM is to draw to screen. There is no chance of a RCE, or data exfiltration.

>>samwil+xe
The risk is that you could have the text content say one thing while the visual display says another. There are social engineering and phishing risks.

>>turnso+lh
If you control the font, you control the content as well, I don't see the attack vector.

>>alexvi+sv1
Certain design tools type sites like Canva or Pitch allow you to upload fonts and obviously control the content. They are frequently used by phishers to make official looking phishing pages on a trusted source, leading to a cat and mouse game where the companies try to catch phishing like indicators in the content and flag them up for human review or block immediately.

In that case being able to show arbitrary other text would definitely be a hindrance because the scanning software typically looks at the data stored in the database. However I think you don't need a Turing machine to exploit this — you could have a single ligature in a well crafted font produce a full paragraph of text.

Perhaps there's an alternative vector where someone's premade font on a site that doesn't allow font uploading can be exploited to make arbitrary calculations given certain character strings. Maybe bitcoin mining, if you could find a way to phone home with the result