Description

After a certificate error was overridden by the user, qutebrowser displays the URL as yellow (colors.statusbar.url.warn.fg). However, when the affected website was subsequently loaded again, the URL was mistakenly displayed as green (colors.statusbar.url.success_https). While the user already has seen a certificate error prompt at this point (or set content.ssl_strict to false which is not recommended), this could still provide a false sense of security.

Affected versions and patches

All versions of qutebrowser are believed to be affected, though versions before v0.11.x couldn't be tested.

The issue is fixed in qutebrowser v1.11.1 (pending release) and v1.12.0 (unreleased). Backported patches for older versions are available, but no further releases are planned.

Mitigation

If you are unable to upgrade:

• Treat any host with a certificate exception as insecure, ignoring the URL color
• Or set content.ssl_strict to True (instead of 'ask'), preventing certificate exceptions

References

• qutebrowser issue: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/5403
• Fix (master branch): https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/commit/021ab572a319ca3db5907a33a59774f502b3b975
• Related issue for KDE Falkon: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420902
• Related issue for eric6 Web Browser: https://tracker.die-offenbachs.homelinux.org/eric/issue328 (fixed in eric6 20.6)