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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+ "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"><head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
+<meta name="description" content="Explains how to safely allow the embedding of flash from trusted sites in HTML Purifier." />
+<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./style.css" />
+
+<title>Embedding YouTube Videos - HTML Purifier</title>
+
+</head><body>
+
+<h1 class="subtitled">Embedding YouTube Videos</h1>
+<div class="subtitle">...as well as other dangerous active content</div>
+
+<div id="filing">Filed under End-User</div>
+<div id="index">Return to the <a href="index.html">index</a>.</div>
+<div id="home"><a href="http://htmlpurifier.org/">HTML Purifier</a> End-User Documentation</div>
+
+<p>Clients like their YouTube videos. It gives them a warm fuzzy feeling when
+they see a neat little embedded video player on their websites that can play
+the latest clips from their documentary &quot;Fido and the Bones of Spring&quot;.
+All joking aside, the ability to embed YouTube videos or other active
+content in their pages is something that a lot of people like.</p>
+
+<p>This is a <em>bad</em> idea. The moment you embed anything untrusted,
+you will definitely be slammed by a manner of nasties that can be
+embedded in things from your run of the mill Flash movie to
+<a href="http://blog.spywareguide.com/2006/12/myspace_phish_attack_leads_use.html">Quicktime movies</a>.
+Even <code>img</code> tags, which HTML Purifier allows by default, can be
+dangerous. Be distrustful of anything that tells a browser to load content
+from another website automatically.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily for us, however, whitelisting saves the day. Sure, letting users
+include any old random flash file could be dangerous, but if it's
+from a specific website, it probably is okay. If no amount of pleading will
+convince the people upstairs that they should just settle with just linking
+to their movies, you may find this technique very useful.</p>
+
+<h2>Looking in</h2>
+
+<p>Below is custom code that allows users to embed
+YouTube videos. This is not favoritism: this trick can easily be adapted for
+other forms of embeddable content.</p>
+
+<p>Usually, websites like YouTube give us boilerplate code that you can insert
+into your documents. YouTube's code goes like this:</p>
+
+<pre>
+&lt;object width=&quot;425&quot; height=&quot;350&quot;&gt;
+ &lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/AyPzM5WK8ys&quot; /&gt;
+ &lt;param name=&quot;wmode&quot; value=&quot;transparent&quot; /&gt;
+ &lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/AyPzM5WK8ys&quot;
+ type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot;
+ wmode=&quot;transparent&quot; width=&quot;425&quot; height=&quot;350&quot; /&gt;
+&lt;/object&gt;
+</pre>
+
+<p>There are two things to note about this code:</p>
+
+<ol>
+ <li><code>&lt;embed&gt;</code> is not recognized by W3C, so if you want
+ standards-compliant code, you'll have to get rid of it.</li>
+ <li>The code is exactly the same for all instances, except for the
+ identifier <tt>AyPzM5WK8ys</tt> which tells us which movie file
+ to retrieve.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>What point 2 means is that if we have code like <code>&lt;span
+class=&quot;youtube-embed&quot;&gt;AyPzM5WK8ys&lt;/span&gt;</code> your
+application can reconstruct the full object from this small snippet that
+passes through HTML Purifier <em>unharmed</em>.
+<a href="http://repo.or.cz/w/htmlpurifier.git?a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=library/HTMLPurifier/Filter/YouTube.php">Show me the code!</a></p>
+
+<p>And the corresponding usage:</p>
+
+<pre>&lt;?php
+ $config-&gt;set('Filter.YouTube', true);
+?&gt;</pre>
+
+<p>There is a bit going in the two code snippets, so let's explain.</p>
+
+<ol>
+ <li>This is a Filter object, which intercepts the HTML that is
+ coming into and out of the purifier. You can add as many
+ filter objects as you like. <code>preFilter()</code>
+ processes the code before it gets purified, and <code>postFilter()</code>
+ processes the code afterwards. So, we'll use <code>preFilter()</code> to
+ replace the object tag with a <code>span</code>, and <code>postFilter()</code>
+ to restore it.</li>
+ <li>The first preg_replace call replaces any YouTube code users may have
+ embedded into the benign span tag. Span is used because it is inline,
+ and objects are inline too. We are very careful to be extremely
+ restrictive on what goes inside the span tag, as if an errant code
+ gets in there it could get messy.</li>
+ <li>The HTML is then purified as usual.</li>
+ <li>Then, another preg_replace replaces the span tag with a fully fledged
+ object. Note that the embed is removed, and, in its place, a data
+ attribute was added to the object. This makes the tag standards
+ compliant! It also breaks Internet Explorer, so we add in a bit of
+ conditional comments with the old embed code to make it work again.
+ It's all quite convoluted but works.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<h2>Warning</h2>
+
+<p>There are a number of possible problems with the code above, depending
+on how you look at it.</p>
+
+<h3>Cannot change width and height</h3>
+
+<p>The width and height of the final YouTube movie cannot be adjusted. This
+is because I am lazy. If you really insist on letting users change the size
+of the movie, what you need to do is package up the attributes inside the
+span tag (along with the movie ID). It gets complicated though: a malicious
+user can specify an outrageously large height and width and attempt to crash
+the user's operating system/browser. You need to either cap it by limiting
+the amount of digits allowed in the regex or using a callback to check the
+number.</p>
+
+<h3>Trusts media's host's security</h3>
+
+<p>By allowing this code onto our website, we are trusting that YouTube has
+tech-savvy enough people not to allow their users to inject malicious
+code into the Flash files. An exploit on YouTube means an exploit on your
+site. Even though YouTube is run by the reputable Google, it
+<a href="http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20061213/google-xss-vuln/">doesn't</a>
+mean they are
+<a href="http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20061208/xss-in-googles-orkut/">invulnerable.</a>
+You're putting a certain measure of the job on an external provider (just as
+you have by entrusting your user input to HTML Purifier), and
+it is important that you are cognizant of the risk.</p>
+
+<h3>Poorly written adaptations compromise security</h3>
+
+<p>This should go without saying, but if you're going to adapt this code
+for Google Video or the like, make sure you do it <em>right</em>. It's
+extremely easy to allow a character too many in <code>postFilter()</code> and
+suddenly you're introducing XSS into HTML Purifier's XSS free output. HTML
+Purifier may be well written, but it cannot guard against vulnerabilities
+introduced after it has finished.</p>
+
+<h2>Help out!</h2>
+
+<p>If you write a filter for your favorite video destination (or anything
+like that, for that matter), send it over and it might get included
+with the core!</p>
+
+</body>
+</html>
+
+<!-- vim: et sw=4 sts=4
+-->