phpBB 2.0.17 remote avatar size bug

[SmOk3 <smok3f00 () gmail com>]

Title: phpBB remote avatar size bug
Software: phpBB 2.0.17 (and maybe prior versions)
Discovered by: David Sopas Ferreira < david at systemsecure dot org >
Original link: http://www.systemsecure.org/ssforum/viewtopic.php?t=272


» Email from phpBB «

Your report "Avatar size" has been closed because your reported issue is
invalid.
Classifying a report as invalid can have various reasons, most of the time
the report is incomplete.

If you think your report has been handled incorrecly, please submit
another report at http://www.phpbb.com/security/index.php.


Comment added by team member:

This isn't a security problem. You can do the same thing with a standard
webpage. As for checking remote avatar size, there are several inherit
problems with that, which I won't detail here. As this isn't a security
problem, closing.

» End Of Mail - «


» My personnal opinion:

I think this is a minor security problem. A malicious user can use larger images
(for example: 1280px - 1024px) to almost damage the entire view of a
topic. This, to
be done, has to have Remote Avatar selected.

So, if the admins don't consider this a minor security problem, what
is it? A "special"
feature?

I don't want to criticize the phpBB coders, but why is it dificult to
check out the size
of a image and telling the user that that size of image it's not
possible, or even block the
size on the viewtopic table, something like that.


» Possible solution:

Disable remote avatar or just dig in the code to set the image size you want.