buildfocus 2 days ago

This expectation is that this should not work - well behaved network devices shouldn't accept a blind GET like this for destructive operations. Plenty of other good reasons for that. No real alternative unless you're also going to block page redirects & links to these URLs as well, which also trigger a similar GET. That would make it impossible to access any local network page without typing it manually.

While it clearly isn't a hard guarantee, in practice it does seem to generally work as these have been known issues without apparent massive exploits for decades. That CORS restrictions block probing (no response provided) does help makes this all significantly more difficult.

1
oasisbob 1 day ago

"No true Scotsman allows GETs with side effects" is not a strong argument

It's not just HTTP where this is a problem. There are enough http-ish protocols where protocol smuggling confusion is a risk. It's possible to send chimeric HTTP requests at devices which then interpret them as a protocol other than http.

bawolff 1 day ago

Yes, which is why web browsers way back even in the netscape navigator era had a blacklist of ports that are disallowed.