Bugtraq: Re: Troff dangerous.

[peak () ARGO TROJA MFF CUNI CZ (Pavel Kankovsky)]

On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, Pawel Wilk wrote:

> If you want your system safe,
> don't look as root
> at manual page.
The dangerous instructions (.pso, .open/.opena) are probably GNU
troff (aka groff) specific. Little (if any) functionality would be
lost if the were removed for the sake of safety.

Nevertheless, this does not imply other implementations must be
absolutely safe: for example, there are probably ways to abuse .so as
well (.so /dev/zero, .so /dev/kmem, .so some-system-fifo...).

--Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak  [ Boycott Microsoft--http://www.vcnet.com/bms ]
"Resistance is futile. Open your source code and prepare for assimilation."