Google has a secret browser hidden inside the settings
matan-h.com
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I recently discovered a secret browser located inside the "Manage my account" popup that Android has in various apps (quite important apps, such as Settings, and all Google suite apps).

A dev recently discovered a browser built into the settings (for any google app that lets you edit settings). From there you can bypass parental controls or enterprise restrictions.

This is a pretty exciting “extra feature”, Google!

Troy
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51Y

I have a memory of something similar at a travel tourism kiosk. Kiosk was locked to their webpage. Right clicked an image, chose “save as”, navigated to something with a folder, right clicked and chose “Open in New Window” (might be misrembering – older version of windows) to pop up Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer, at the time, embedded Internet Explorer 4 if you typed a URL in the address bar, so off the races I was.

Life before smartphones, man.

spunker88
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51Y

The older versions of IE back in the Windows 9X era would essentially turn into Windows Explorer if you put a local file path into them. I remember using this exploit back in the day on our school computers that ran a locked down version of Windows where you couldn’t browse anything in Windows Explorer beyond your personal network folder. I found that by typing C:/ into the IE address bar it would turn IE into Windows Explorer mode and from there I had full access to the C drive and could even open up the folder tree sidebar thing and browse the local network, finding all sorts of folders that I wasn’t supposed to be able to access.

Troy
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01Y

Right! Just typing C:\Windows\command.com in the address bar was usually enough to completely control a system :)

That is evil genius and I love it.

Haha, yes! Sounds about right. Someone could create a puzzle game where you trying to escape a vendor kiosk and it gets progressively more complex as you go on.

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