I published the following diary on isc.sans.edu: “Show me Your Clipboard Data!“:
Yesterday I’ve read an article about the clipboard on iPhones and how it can disclose sensitive information about the device owner. At the end of the article, the author gave a reference to an iPhone app that discloses the metadata of pictures copied to the clipboard (like the GPS coordinates).
This is true, our clipboards may contain sensitive information like… passwords, private URLs, confidential text, and man more! About passwords, many password managers use the clipboard to make the user’s life easier. You just need to paste data exported by the password manager in the password field. Some of them implement a technique to restore the content of the clipboard with previous data. This is very convenient but it is NOT a security feature. Once data has been copied into the clipboard, it can be considered as “lost†if other applications are monitoring its content… [Read more]