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Message-ID: <20251211032427.GB200243@qaa.vinc17.org>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2025 04:24:27 +0100
From: Vincent Lefevre <vincent@...c17.net>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: LibreOffice puts searched text into the PRIMARY
selection (Linux, X11)
On 2025-12-10 17:08:42 +0100, Marco Moock wrote:
> Am 10.12.2025 um 12:35:17 Uhr schrieb Vincent Lefevre:
>
> > Under Linux X11, LibreOffice (Writer, Calc, Draw...) silently puts
> > searched text into the PRIMARY selection when a search is active and
> > its window gets the focus. This can yield such text to be disclosed
> > to web sites (when one clicks with the middle button in some form)
> > and to other applications using the same X server (without needing
> > any action from the user).
>
> This behavior exists in various applications like browsers, when
> focusing the address bar (I saw that in Pale Moon). Dunno if that is
> related to the GTK toolkit.
>
> The common behavior for applications is that text is only copied to
> primary if it is actively selected.
Here, with LibreOffice, this is worse, because this occurs whenever
the LibreOffice window gets the focus.
As a comparison, with Atril, when I choose "Save As...", the file name
(without the extension) gets selected and the PRIMARY selection is
modified (it gets this selection), which is bad. But at least, when
I modify the PRIMARY selection by selecting something in another
application and the focus is given back to the "Save As..." window,
the PRIMARY selection is *not* modified (contrary to what happens
with LibreOffice).
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@...c17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
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