WoW, Casually: Tips for keeping your account safe

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-05-2009 @ 5:44PM

shadowwolf007 said...

Wrong.

Any application can read from the clipboard at any time. It's a global thing, not a per-application thing ( how else do you get your text from Word in to your favorite chat application ).

Clipboard text is stored in plain text, so it's easily readable by any application on the system. Thus explains this security policy implemented in IE7: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250473(VS.85).aspx

Clipboard text is grabbed through a standard API call that is the same on nearly every Windows OS. This means all you have to do is copy out clipboard contents whenever someone pastes something in and parse. Within a few seconds you can figure out if it's text and, if so, whether it's a password.

And hey, a sample application for how this can be done is available on MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649016(VS.85).aspx

So not only can I do this, but I can do so writing not even 1 line of my own code.

*PLEASE* stop spreading this misinformation. It doesn't matter where you heard it: This advice is wrong.

Read more on the clipboard here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649012(VS.85).aspx

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.