Surfing porn in Google Chrome's Incognito mode lets you check out all the sex you want without anyone being the wiser, unless you're on a Mac. Evan Andersen found a bug in Chrome that left his fun time activity loaded in his NVIDIA graphics card memory—a bug that NVIDIA claims is actually Apple's fault.
Incognito Web browsing bug could show your online activity
Incognito mode is a feature that doesn't log your browser history or keep cached images, both of which are especially handy if you don't want anyone knowing what you're looking at online. Discretion, they say, is the better part of valor.
In Mr. Andersen's case, however, the images he was checking out a few hours earlier popped up on his display when he started to play Diablo III. Instead of seeing the usual splash screen as the game loaded, he saw a jumble of porn shots he checked out prior launching the game.
"So how did this happen? A bug in Nvidia's GPU drivers," Mr. Andersen said. "GPU memory is not erased before giving it to an application. This allows the contents of one application to leak into another."
NVIDIA says it's really Apple's fault and that it's video cards are performing exactly as they should. In a statement to Venture Beat, NVIDIA said it's OS X memory management that's at fault.
A company spokesperson said, "[Our] driver adheres to policies set by the operating system and our driver is working as expected. We have not seen this issue on Windows, where all application-specific data is cleared before memory is released to other applications."
As long as everyone is finger pointing, there's more waggling to be done. Chrome isn't clearing the video card's memory buffer at the end of Incognito sessions, and Diablo isn't flushing it, either. To be fair, an app requesting buffer contents should make sure it's been cleared first. In this case, it's Diablo III's responsibility.
The problem isn't limited to porn and Chrome, and Reddit users are saying the issue may include AMD's video cards, too. Any content stored in NVIDIA's buffer is up for grabs, so to speak, until it's explicitly flushed. That means any content that's stored there from any app could potentially be seen by someone else using your Mac.
Mr. Andersen said he alerted NVIDIA and Google of the bug over a year ago, but it still persists. Apple is aware of it now, but hasn't commented.
Until someone owns up and decides to address the issue, it's up to end users to make sure their sensitive data isn't tucked away in their graphics card. The easiest way to make sure there aren't any surprises tucked away is to reboot your Mac after doing anything sensitive, or maybe just play a little Diablo III.
[Some image elements courtesy Shutterstock]