Reply to post: Re: A Web browser is for Web pages

Reminder: IE, Edge, Outlook etc still cough up your Windows, VPN credentials to strangers

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: A Web browser is for Web pages

I may agree with you, but it's not a MS obsession. It's the obsession born when everything had to become a URL. Most browsers process far more than http(s):// - they may process mailto: ftp: about: and so on. If you look in the registry under HKCR\PROTOCOLS\Handler you will find the protocol handlers IE supports - you can write and register your own, if you need your own specific ones (once for leisure I implemented the rtfm:// handler, beside some needed for an application. It was very useful....!)

Other browser may have similar mechanisms. IMHO the problem is in the file protocol handler which is used to open local files (including web pages...) without the need of setting up an http server - it will probably try to access files on shares, and outside a domain it will trigger the default NTLM behaviour. You can even trigger it in a domain just using an IP address instead of a fqdn, probably.

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