3 ms·

The security of a terminal emulator? Did you post on the wrong article, perhaps?

• yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Display something in terminal (curl, cat a download file, whatever will display untrusted content) -> control code (https://www.xfree86.org/4.8.0/ctlseqs.html https://www.xfree86.org/4.8.0/ctlseqs.html) / escape code (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code) -> bug (or worse, feature) -> arbitrary code execution
• reilly3000 5y ago
  I suppose a bad actor could log keystrokes or terminal output and phone home. I can't think of anything more ring 0 than one's terminal. If you're especially evil you could register a domain that looks like an apt repo url and drop your payload during updates, so anybody inspecting traffic would probably miss it.
  • tadfisher 5y ago
    I feel like the shell itself would be a much more lucrative target.
    • reilly3000 5y ago
      As in being able to execute arbitrary commands (silently)?
      • tadfisher 5y ago
        Yes, and it could "keylog" over remote connections as well.
        • pama 5y ago
          Very few admins would switch from bash (possibly zsh), and bash has tons of eyes looking over its codebase. Terminals are interchangeable and could direct the shell in ways that can be invisible to the user.
          • tadfisher 5y ago
            All the security review in the world won't stop a vulnerability elsewhere from replacing `sudo` with an alias in your `.bash_profile`.
            • pama 5y ago
              Agreed. A malicious terminal could do all that and more. And it won’t have to edit your bashrc, though it certainly could.
• vidarh 5y ago
  A terminal needs to be able to read what you type, and execute arbitrary programs as you. If it is malicious, you're screwed. If it has bugs you might be screwed just viewing a malicious text file.