One of the programs in my Kubuntu has stopped working. When I launch this program, a notification from Dr. Konqi appears in the tray:
Program “Program name” has crashed.
Send an error report to improve this program.
After that, I am prompted to report the error. Then, the “Error Reporting Wizard” opens.
I would like to know - does this information get sent in clear text or encrypted?
far as i know it sends it in the clear, but you can review all the info before hand to see if there is anything sensitive, but i doubt you will find anything.
my bigger issue is i’ve never gotten it to work…it always seems to find some reason to fail.
i’ve had better results using the command line tool on kubuntu
ubuntu-bug PACKAGENAME
to get the package name exactly right you can run
`apt list PACKAGENAME*`
with a wildcard on your best guess for the package name based on the name of the program
or you can use a tool like synaptic and do a search in there for installed packages
if it’s a GUI application you can go to app menu and right click for the edit applications option from the context menu and look up your application in there to see what packages is being run
It is likely using transport level encryption, i.e. HTTPS, just like when accessing the system via a browser.
I doubt anything would be gained by using HTTP without SSL since the server already has a certificate and it should be equally valid for the bug report tool
Answering the post title: applications use literally one line from a library called KCrash, which IIRC intercepts crash information from the app before it closes and calls DrKonqi, which is the program that shows that nice dialog you described.
DrKonqi then sends automated crash information to sentry or manual crash information to bugs.kde.org.
Some distros also use their own crash reporting tools.
Yeah, I just checked and DrKonqi is using QNetworkAccessManager and co either to sentry over HTTPS or bugzilla over HTTPS so I believe it always does things over HTTPS.
Should have called it Krash! Missed opportunity.
Thank you, guys! I’m glad that the reports being sent are securely encrypted. 