What are the implications of disbling websecurity in a blackberry10 app?

Question

In another question dealing with a bug in blackberry10 that denies cross origin XHR calls, it is proposed to get around the issue by disabling web security.

But what does disabling web security really imply here? Am I going to torture small harmless woodland creatures if I use this?

Seriously though, does doing this expose my app to additional security risks beyond those introduced when adding the popular wildcard access uri="*" or access origin="*" line in my config.xml for blackberry10?

please advice

Answer 1

But what does disabling web security really imply here? Am I going to torture small harmless woodland creatures if I use this?

No.

It means your application could access ANY resource in the Internet good, bad or ugly IF (and only if) the user is able to navigate / access that resource.

By disabling web security, the following scenario could happen:

If you published a link in your app to a remote page that you do not control, you risk that page may display unexpected/malicious/inappropriate content OR enable the user to navigate elsewhere to another page that might. Example: Say you are display content in your app loaded directly from some remote URL. Do you know exactly what type of content your users might 'see' in your app? If that remote URL was loading 'buy these pills now to get huge' advertisements from a different URL, would you be okay with YOUR users seeing that content in YOUR app?

Most devs will only include content in their app that they 'trust' and white list just the specific urls they need. However, sometimes you do need to unlock the front door if you don't know what URL your users want to access.

So disabling web security is available if you really need it, but not recommended. Use it at your own risk, not as a matter of convenience.