Develop Reference

JavaScript Canvas toDataURL security considerations

I'm curious if anyone could fill me in on how safe it is to use toDataURL on a user provided image. The basic idea is that User A would upload an image in their browser and it would be converted to an URL, and then ignoring steps in between, eventually User B (as well as other users) would retrieve the URL format where it would be converted back into an image and displayed in User B's browser.
So my question revolves around whether someone could abuse the system to inject code into User B's browser, or otherwise cause havoc. In general, what security considerations are there that must be taken when using toDataURL and then later converting it back?
I'm aware that cross origin images taint a canvas which disallows any methods that involve the data, but I'm not aware of how much of a blanket solution this is. I've read that some browsers don't have this restriction while other's (and even other versions of the same browser) implement this restriction differently depending on the content of the cross origin image.
What I've found in my research so far:
this question where the answer pointed to a great article that looked at it from the perspective of storing the uploaded image on a server.
this question where the answer points out an interesting way to hide a script in an image I'd never seen before, but I'm not sure what vulnerability it creates if I'm not trying to extract a script from that image and run it.
and this link which details a great reason why browser's choose to restrict access to image data for cross origin images. I always assumed it was just about protecting against malicious images, but now realize it also protects against much more.
None of the above have sufficiently approached it from the perspective of one user attacking another user through uploading an image (that doesn't stay as uploaded but instead gets converted to data url) that another user later downloads and views (with img src set to data url, not the malicious user's original upload). 2 is close to answering my question, but as I understand it, the detailed methods wouldn't work without the malicious user also having injected some script into the viewing user's browser.
To go along with this question is an example of what I would like to do including the file uploading/conversion to data url along with a sample data url to try out the importing (this sample url is safe to import and small so it imports quickly):
window.onload = function() {
document.getElementById("convert").onclick = convert;
document.getElementById("import").onclick = importF;
let imageLoader = document.getElementById("imageLoader");
let canvas = document.getElementById("imageCanvas");
let ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
imageLoader.addEventListener('change', e => {
let reader = new FileReader();
reader.onload = (ee) => {
loadImage("imageCanvas", ee.target.result);
}
reader.readAsDataURL(e.target.files[0]);
}, false);
};
function loadImage(id, src) {
let canvas = document.getElementById(id);
let ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
let img = new Image();
img.onload = () => {
canvas.width = img.width;
canvas.height = img.height;
ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0);
}
img.src = src;
}
function convert() {
let canvas = document.getElementById("imageCanvas");
console.log(canvas.toDataURL());
}
function importF() {
let imageImport = document.getElementById("imageImport");
let url = imageImport.value;
loadImage("imageCanvas", url);
}
<label>Upload Image:</label>
<input type="file" id="imageLoader" name="imageLoader"/>
<br/>
<label>Import Image:</label>
<input type="text" id="imageImport" name="imageImport"/>
<br/>
<label>Sample URL:</label>
<code style="user-select: all;"> data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAOCAYAAAAmL5yKAAAApUlEQVQ4T2NkQALyKu5GjP8Z01kZ/1n/+s+kjSyHi80Ik1BQdvf4z8C4nYPx/z819t9M+py/GRj+MzAwgFTgocEGyCl75DEyMEz04f3OEC34lUGY+R8xloPVMMopeTgzMjLsMeb8xdAu8YFojTCFjPJKblNlWf+lTpV5z8rBCHIraYBRQ9Xtoi3XL70S0U+k6YSqZpRX9vgfK/CVIVbw66gBIzcMAHB4Ryt6jeYXAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC </code>
<br/>
<button id="import"> Import from URL </button>
<button id="convert"> Convert to URL </button>
<br/>
<canvas id="imageCanvas"></canvas>

There seems to be some confusion here, and given how misleading your links are I can understand.
Tainted canvas
"Tainting the canvas" is a security operation which blocks .toDataURL() and any other exporting method like .toBlob(), .captureStream() or 2D context's .getImageData().
There are only a few cases where this operation is done:
Cross-origin resources: That's the most common on the web. Site A drew a resource like an image from Site B on a canvas. If Site B didn't tell the browser that it allows Site A to read this content by passing an appropriate Allow-Origin headers, then the browser has to "taint" the canvas.
This only protects the resource. There is no real security added to Site A in that case.
Information leakage: That's more of an exception, but still it's a thing. Browsers may decide on their own that some actions could leak privacy information about their user. For instance the most common case is to "taint" the canvas when an SVG image containing a <foreigObject> is painted on the canvas. Since this tag can render HTML, it can also leak what link has been visited for instance. Browsers should take care of anonymizing these resources, but nevertheless, Safari still does taint any such SVG image, Chrome buggily still does taint the ones served from a blob: URI, IE did taint any SVG image (not only the ones with <foreignObject>), and all did at some point taint the canvas when using some externals filter.
Information leakage II: There is also something that no browser can fight against when reading a canvas generated bitmap. Every hardware and software will produce slightly different results when asked to perform the same drawing operations. This can be used to finger-print the current browser. Some browser extensions will thus block these methods too, or make it return dummy results.
Now, none of this really protects from malicious images.
Images embedding malicious code
The kind of images that can embed malicious code are generally exploiting vulnerabilities in the image parsers and renderers. I don't think any up to date such parser or renderer is still vulnerable to such attacks, but even though there was one, which would be used by a web browser, then when it's been drawn to the canvas, it's already too late. Tainting the canvas would not protect anything.
One thing you may have heard about is stegosploit. This consists in hiding malicious code in the image, but the HTML canvas there was used to decode that malicious code. So if you don't have the script to extract and execute the malicious script embedded, it doesn't represent much a risk, and actually, if you do reexport it, there are good chances that this embedded data gets lost.
Risks inherent with uploading content to a server
There are many risks when uploading anything to your server. I can't stress it out enough but Read OWASP recommendations carefully.
Particular risks when uploading a data: URL
data: URLs are a good vector for XSS attacks. Indeed, it is very likely that you will build HTML code directly using that data: URL. If you didn't apply the correct sanitization steps, you may very well load an attacker's script instead of an image:
const dataURIFromServer = `data:image/png,"' onerror="alert('nasty script ran')"`;
const makeImgHTML = ( uri ) => `<img src="${uri}">`;
document.getElementById('container').innerHTML = makeImgHTML(dataURIFromServer);
<div id="container"></div>
A final word on data: URLs
data: URLs are a mean to store data in an URL so that it can be passed directly without the need for a server.
Storing a data: URL to a server is counter-productive.
To represent binary data, this data needs to be encoded in base64 so that all unsafe characters can still be represented in most encodings. This operation will cause a grow of about 34% of the original data size, and you will have to store this as a String, which is not convenient for most data bases.
Really, data: URLs are from an other era. There is really little cases where you want to use it. Most of what you want to do with a data: URL, you should do it with a Blob and a blob: URL. For instance, upload your image as Blob directly to your server. Use the canvas .toBlob() method if you need to export its content. Use img.src = URL.createObjectURL(file) if you want to present an image picked by your user.
TL;DR
- In your scenario toDataURL() in itself will not create any risk, nor will it prevent any.
- Use the well-known techniques to sanitize your users' uploads (don't trust them ever and remember they may not even be using your UI to talk to your server).
- Avoid data: URLs. They are inefficient.

How to export/upload an html/javascript blob file to the client PC displaying the html file?

I wrote a c++/c# Windows program that creates an html report using an xsl transform. The html report includes canvas element drawings. I give the user the option of converting the html report to a Word doc (if it's installed), but, although the conversion works fine, it ignores the canvas drawings. As a workaround, I would like to convert the canvas elements to png images and "export" them to the client PC (that is using my program to create the report). I know how to convert the canvas to a dataURL and then to a blob, but I can't figure out how to upload the blob file to the client PC, which of course is not a webserver.
Also, once the file is on the client, can the blob be treated as a png image?

[Edit] : I missed that the export is made to an .doc file
In this case, it depends on how you are converting your html to .doc.
In the case of an .docx, it should be possible to include your canvas' images as attachments in the .docx internal file tree, under word > media.
In the case of an .doc, the image file seems to be merged into the .doc file itself, might be possible to use an FileReader to append it.
If you are using a library, it depends on the library you use. The first one I found on google (html-docx-js), claims that they need your images as dataURI to be able to save it.
And to convert all your canvases to dataURI, you can use something along the lines of :
document.querySelectorAll('canvas').forEach( canvas =>{
var img = new Image();
try{
img.src = canvas.toDataURL();
canvas.replaceWith(img);
}
catch(e){
handleTaintedCanvas(); // I let you decide what should happen here
}
});
So once it's done, you would just have to call this lib, and it should work.
[Previous] This answers how to export to an stand-alone .html file.
For better compatibility across devices, convert your canvases to dataURI png images.
The Blob way
If you want to go the Blob way, you'd have to save a folder, containing your html file, and all the images as separated files, with correct references to them in the HTML markup.
That's possible too, e.g you could generate an zip file with the correct structure, and all included files, but some browsers don't accept loading external files from the file:// protocol, and your user would have to keep the directory structure untouched.
So all in all,
a lot of work for you,
little advantages (37% of image files size...)
complications for your users (all don't even know what to do with an zip file...)
<canvas> to dataURL
To convert your canvases to dataURI, a simple function would be
[Moved to edit]
And from now on, all your clean canvases will be converted to dataURI images, that you'll be able to export with your html file, which will be standalone.
<script> to dataURL
Note that there is also an third way to handle it (could be the best one actually depending on the nature of your original page):
You can convert all your <script> tags to dataURI, and keep your canvases in the document. This way, you'll still have an standalone working html file. But this implies that you don't need external resources.

Javascript proof-of-concept of GIF (re)compression

My program Precomp can be used to further compress already compressed file formats like GIF, PNG, PDF, ZIP and more. Roughly summarized, it does this by decompressing the compressed streams, recompressing them and storing the differences between the expected compressed stream and the actual compressed stream. As an example, this rotating earth picture from Wikipedia is compressed from 1429 KB to 755 KB. The process is lossless, so the original GIF file can be restored.
The algorithm for the GIF file format can be isolated and implemented relatively easy, so I was thinking about a proof-of-concept implementation in JavaScript. This would lead to the web server sending a compressed version of the GIF file (.pcf ending, essentially a bzip2 compressed file of the
GIF image contents) and the client decompressing the data, recompressing to GIF and displaying it. The following things would've to be done:
The web site author would've to compress his GIF files using the standard version of Precomp and serve these instead of the GIF files together with a JavaScript for the client side recompression.
The client would decompress the bzip2 compressed file, this could be done using one of the existing bzip2 Javascript implementations.
The client would recompress the image content into the original GIF file.
The process is trade of bandwidth against CPU usage on the client side.
Now my questions are the following:
Are there any general problems with the process of loading a different file and "converting" it to GIF?
What would you recommend to display before the client side finishes (image placeholder)?
What do I have to do to make sure the .pcf file is cached? Bandwidth savings were useless if doesn't get cached.
Is there a way to display the original GIF if JavaScript is deactivated, but avoid loading the GIF if JavaScript is activated?
Can I give the users a way to configure the behaviour? E.g. on mobile devices, some might avoid bandwidth, but others might want less CPU usage.
Would it be possible to display interlaced GIFs as supposed (going from a rough version to the final image)? This would require updating the image content multiple times at different stages of recompression.

Let's begin by answering your specific questions. Code example below.
Q&A
Are there any general problems with the process of loading a different file and "converting" it to GIF?
The main problem is complication. You are effectively writing a browser addon, like those for JPEG2000.
If you are writing real browser addons, each major browsers do it differently, and change addon formats occasionally, so you have to actively maintain them.
If you are writing a JS library, it will be easier to write and maintain, but it will be unprivileged and suffer from limitations such as cross original restriction.
What would you recommend to display before the client side finishes (image placeholder)?
Depends on what your format can offer.
If you encode the image dimension and a small thumbnail early, you can display an accurate place-holder pretty early.
It is your format, afterall.
What do I have to do to make sure the .pcf file is cached? Bandwidth savings were useless if doesn't get cached.
Nothing different from other files.
Configure the Expires and Cache-Control header on server side and they will be cached.
Manifest and prefetch can also be used.
Is there a way to display the original GIF if JavaScript is deactivated, but avoid loading the GIF if JavaScript is activated?
This is tricky. When JavaScript is disabled, you can only replace elements, not attributes.
This means you cannot create an image somewhere that points to the .pcf files, and ask browser to rewrite the src attribute when JS is unavailable.
I think the best solution to support no JS is outputting the images with document.write, using noscript as fall back:
<noscript>
<img src=demo.gif width=90>
</noscript><script>
loadPcf("demo.pcf","width=90")
</script>
(Some library or framework may make you consider <img src=demo.gif data-pcf=demo.pcf>.
This will not work for you, because browsers will preload 'demo.gif' before your script kicks in, causing additional data transfer.)
Alternatively, browser addons are unaffected by "disable JS" settings, so if you make addons instead then you don't need to worry about it.
Can I give the users a way to configure the behaviour? E.g. on mobile devices, some might avoid bandwidth, but others might want less CPU usage.
Perhaps. You can code a user interface and store the preference in cookie or in localStorage.
Then you can detect preference and switch the logic in server code (if cookie) or in client code.
If you are doing addons, all browsers provide reliable preference mechanism.
The problem is that, again, every browser do it differently.
Would it be possible to display interlaced GIFs as supposed (going from a rough version to the final image)? This would require updating the image content multiple times at different stages of recompression.
If you hands browsers a partial image, they may think the image is corrupted and refuse to show it.
In this case you have to implement your own GIF decoder AND encoder so that you can hands browser a complete placeholder image, just to be safe.
(new) Can I decode image loaded from another site?
I must also repeat the warning that non-addon JS image decoding does not work with cross origin images.
This means, all .pcf files must be on the same server, same port, and same protocol with the site using it.
For example you cannot share images for multiple sites or do optimisations like domain sharding.
Code Example
Here is a minimal example that creates an <img>, loads a gif, half its width, and put it back to the <img>.
To support placeholder or progressive loading, listen to onprogress instead of/in addition to onload.
<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta charset="UTF-8"><script>
function loadPcf( file, attr ) {
var atr = attr || '', id = loadPcf.autoid = 1 + ~~loadPcf.autoid;
document.write( '<img id=pcf'+id+' ' + atr + ' />' );
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.responseType = 'arraybuffer'; // IE 10+ only, sorry.
xhr.onload = function() { // I am loading gif for demo, you can load anything.
var data = xhr.response, img = document.querySelector( '#pcf' + id );
if ( ! img || ! data instanceof ArrayBuffer ) return;
var buf = new DataView( data ), head = buf.getUint32(0), width = buf.getUint16(6,1);
if ( head !== 1195984440 ) return console.log( 'Not a GIF: ' + file ); // 'GIF8' = 1195984440
// Modify data, image width in this case, and push it to the <img> as gif.
buf.setInt16( 6, ~~(width/2), 1 );
img.src = URL.createObjectURL( new Blob( [ buf.buffer ], { type: "image/gif" } ) );
};
xhr.open( 'GET', file );
xhr.send();
}
</script>
<h1>Foo<noscript><img src=a.gif width=90></noscript><script>loadPcf("a.gif","width=90")</script>Bar</h1>
If you don't need <noscript> compatibility (and thus prevent facebook/google+ from seeing the images when the page is shared), you can put the pcf file in <img> src and use JS to handle them en mass, so that you don't need to call loadPcf for each image and will make the html much simpler.
How about <video>?
What you envisioned is mostly doable, in theory, but perhaps you should reconsider.
Judging from the questions you ask, it will be quite difficult for you to define and pull off your vision smoothly.
It is perhaps better to encode your animation in WebM and use <video> instead.
Better browser support back to IE 9 - just add H.264 to make it a dual format video. You need IE 10+ to modify binary data.
Size: Movies has many, many options and tricks to minimise size, and what you learned can be reused in the future.
Progressive: <video> have had some techs for adaptive video, and hopefully they will stabilise soon.
JavaScript: <video> does not depend on JavaScript.
Future-proof: Both WebM and H.264 will be supported by many programs, long after you stopped working on your special format.
Cost-effective: Create a low-bandwith option using smaller or lower quality media is easier and more reliable than a custom format. This is why wikipedia and youtube offers their media in different resolutions.
For non-animations, PNG can also be colour indexed and 7z optimised (keeping the PNG format).
Icon size indexed PNG is often smaller than the same GIF.
Or perhaps your vision (as described in the pcf website) is the capability to encode many different files, not only GIF.
This will be more like supporting a new network protocol, and is likely beyond the scope of humble JavaScript. (e.g. how are you going to handle pdf download or streaming?)

Javascript: Setting img src with absolute path

I am trying to manually set the img src to a path on the filesystem, and then I want to draw that image on a canvas. I am using:
var curr_canv = document.getElementById('c_main').getContext('2d');
var img = new Image();
img.width = 525;
img.height = 400;
img.src = "..\AAAA\BBBB\CCCC\myimage.jpg";
curr_canv.drawImage(img,0,0);
But nothing is drawn on the canvas after I do this. Any thoughts?

You need to set the path to an absolute path within your webserver.
Javascript in the browser has no access to any filesystem.

You are using
\
(backslash)
instead of
/
(forward-slash).
JavaScript uses \ as an escape character.

Yeah the path has to be in the web folder or another accessible path. You can see that you code works in general here: http://jsfiddle.net/pwm36/8/

The short answer is "You can't do that." Javascript running in a browser has no direct access to the user's file system. This is a security feature of browsers in general.
There is a relatively new FileSystem API for HTML5, but it still probably doesn't give you what you want, because the browser is still "jailed". You can't reach any files outside of the directory set aside by the browser.
You might consider the drag-and-drop API. Users can drop files onto an area you designate, and I think you can access it with Javascript at that point.

Like other have said you need to use a webserver delivered image. Or use the "file://" protocol.
Be carefull, loading an image ins an asynchronous tack you fant to draw only after the image has been loaded.
img.onload = function() {
curr_canv.drawImage(img,0,0);
}
See the MDN for more info.

Load local image into browser using JavaScript?

I'm currently developing a solution for a web-to-print, poster printing application.
One of features I'd like to include is the ability to 'edit' (crop/scale/rotate) a given image, before proceeding to order a poster of said image.
To avoid the requirement of the user uploading the image to a remote server before editing, I'd like to know the following:
Is it possible (using JavaScript) to load an image stored on the client machine into the browser / browser memory for editing, without uploading the image to a remote server? And if so, how is this done?
Thanks,
BK

The image can be edited without the user needed to upload the image to the server.
Take a look at the link below. It can be done quite easily.
Reading local files using Javascript

Yes you can! But in order to do it the browser must support Local storage! It is HTML5 api so most modern browsers will be able to do it! Remember that localstorage can save only string data so you must change images into a blob string. YOur image source will look something like this
This is a short snippet that will help you!
if(typeof(Storage)!=="undefined"){
// here you can use the localstorage
// is statement checks if the image is in localstorage as a blob string
if(localStorage.getItem("wall_blue") !== null){
var globalHolder = document.getElementById('globalHolder');
var wall = localStorage.getItem('wall_blue');
globalHolder.style.backgroundImage= "url("+wall+")";
}else{
// if the image is not saved as blob in local storage
// save it for the future by the use of canvas api and toDataUrl method
var img = new Image();
img.src = 'images/walls/wall_blue.png';
img.onload = function () {
var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
canvas.width =this.width;
canvas.height =this.height;
var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
ctx.drawImage(this, 0, 0);
var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL();
localStorage.setItem('wall_blue', dataURL);
};
}}else{//here you upload the image without local storage }
Hope you will find this short snippet useful. Remember Localstorage saves only string data so you cant
Oh and by the way if you are using a jcrop for cropping the images you have to save the blob code from image to the form and send it to the server manually because jcrop only handles images as a file not as a base64 string.
Good luck! :D

Using Html/Javascript you can only select files using the file upload html component (I think Flash / Silverlight wrap this to make things easier but its still sandboxed)
You can however use Java Applets (orwhatever they are called these days), Native ActiveX controls or .Net Controls to provide additional functionality (this hase security implications and required VM/Runtimes Frameworks etc)
Adobe Air or other client side technology might work, but looks like you want to do this in JavaScript. In this case, uploading the file to the server and manipulating from there is the best bet.
*[EDIT]
Since 2010, since this question was answered, technology has moved on, html now has the ability to create and manipulate within the browser. see newer answers or these examples:
http://davidwalsh.name/resize-image-canvas
http://deepliquid.com/content/Jcrop.html
*