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Under what scenario is it ever unsafe to open a text document in TextEdit? Under what scenario would you ever not completely ignore that warning? A much more

Under what scenario is it ever unsafe to open a text document in TextEdit? Under what scenario would you ever not completely ignore that warning? A much more likely threat is a malformed jpg or pdf designed to exploit a decoder, in which case the executable bit is completely irrelevant. Warning the user about the executable bit protects them from nothing, unless Finder is preparing to execute the file itself. It is a warning that is always ignored, and pointless warnings only make the system less secure. And working with multiple quarantined documents exposes more bugs. It's not a thoughtfully designed feature. If they ever fix it I would gladly reenable it.

Someone 14y ago
TextEdit could have a bug in its 'guess the character encoding' code that leads to a buffer overflow, or it could have a bug handling malformed UTF-8. Its 'guess the character encoding' code also might have a 'wait a minute, this is RTF/PDF' feature. Of course, Apple could trust its own apps, but I think they should not (why increase the attack surface?) and that would lead to complaints "why can't I tell this OS that my text editor can be trusted?". I also think (but have no data on it) that this "open a .txt file you downloaded" check is very rare for 'normal' users. If they download at all, it is Word documents, PDFs, movies, and applications.
- LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
  Isn't TextEdit sandboxed in Lion + Mountain Lion? If so TextEdit most likely cannot execute any non signed code or open a network connection... But of course sandboxing should only be used as a last resort. I am not a security expert - can anyone comment on that?
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    My .txt's open with Sublime, which is not Sandboxed (or maybe is, I don't know). They can't de-quarantine .txt's because the default is to open with TextEdit!
- Evbn 14y ago
  And that bug would not be triggered by the execute bit, so an exploit would have a non-exe attack vector

Someone 14y ago

TextEdit could have a bug in its 'guess the character encoding' code that leads to a buffer overflow, or it could have a bug handling malformed UTF-8. Its 'guess the character encoding' code also might have a 'wait a minute, this is RTF/PDF' feature. Of course, Apple could trust its own apps, but I think they should not (why increase the attack surface?) and that would lead to complaints "why can't I tell this OS that my text editor can be trusted?". I also think (but have no data on it) that this "open a .txt file you downloaded" check is very rare for 'normal' users. If they download at all, it is Word documents, PDFs, movies, and applications.

LinaLauneBaer 14y ago
Isn't TextEdit sandboxed in Lion + Mountain Lion? If so TextEdit most likely cannot execute any non signed code or open a network connection... But of course sandboxing should only be used as a last resort. I am not a security expert - can anyone comment on that?
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  My .txt's open with Sublime, which is not Sandboxed (or maybe is, I don't know). They can't de-quarantine .txt's because the default is to open with TextEdit!
Evbn 14y ago
And that bug would not be triggered by the execute bit, so an exploit would have a non-exe attack vector