4 ms·

Terminal emulators should be expected to deal with a lot of untrusted data, such as when you ssh to another machine. With all the context parsing in this, ther

Terminal emulators should be expected to deal with a lot of untrusted data, such as when you ssh to another machine. With all the context parsing in this, there is a large attack surface. I hope thought has been put into how to handle this.

josho 13y ago
Untrusted data in a terminal emulator??? I don't believe that I've ever used a terminal to connect to an untrusted system. Ie. local login, or ssh to a system that I trust enough to compile my programs or run my servers. If the terminal receives untrusted data back then I've got bigger problems than a security hole in my terminal emulator.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  This has been a problem before: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2003-0063 http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2003-0063 Untrusted data being sent to a terminal emulator does not imply you are logged into an untrusted system with it. Users should be able to view arbitrary files through their terminal emulator safely, should be able to use IRC safely, should be able to use finger safely, etc. There are enough people here reporting errors (having it hang with certain output, crashing X.org, etc) to cause me to be very wary of this. I am not confident it would stand up to a security review.
- anon1385 13y ago
  Perhaps these will whet your appetite… http://www.shmoo.com/mail/bugtraq/sep99/msg00145.html http://www.shmoo.com/mail/bugtraq/sep99/msg00145.html https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2003-0063 https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2003-00... Also here is an overview of some of the possible ways things can go wrong: http://lists.kde.org/?l=konsole-devel&m=104617524910254&w=2 http://lists.kde.org/?l=konsole-devel&m=104617524910254&w=2 The entire concept of exploiting a terminal by supplying hostile input has been around for over 10 years now. Unix veterans and BBS users have been exposed to this type of problem since the very beginning, a newsgroup search can turn up all sorts of exploits, from the ever-popular "flash" program to the abuse of logging features in xterm which were disabled in R5
- wtbob 13y ago
  What if you're reading netnews in your term? What if you're browsing the web in your term?
- mikeash 13y ago
  You've never displayed content in your terminal that you didn't generate yourself? Never ran curl against a URL to check out the headers? Never popped open an editor containing source code downloaded from the internet?

josho 13y ago

Untrusted data in a terminal emulator??? I don't believe that I've ever used a terminal to connect to an untrusted system. Ie. local login, or ssh to a system that I trust enough to compile my programs or run my servers. If the terminal receives untrusted data back then I've got bigger problems than a security hole in my terminal emulator.

jlgreco 13y ago
This has been a problem before: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2003-0063 http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2003-0063 Untrusted data being sent to a terminal emulator does not imply you are logged into an untrusted system with it. Users should be able to view arbitrary files through their terminal emulator safely, should be able to use IRC safely, should be able to use finger safely, etc. There are enough people here reporting errors (having it hang with certain output, crashing X.org, etc) to cause me to be very wary of this. I am not confident it would stand up to a security review.
anon1385 13y ago
Perhaps these will whet your appetite… http://www.shmoo.com/mail/bugtraq/sep99/msg00145.html http://www.shmoo.com/mail/bugtraq/sep99/msg00145.html https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2003-0063 https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2003-00... Also here is an overview of some of the possible ways things can go wrong: http://lists.kde.org/?l=konsole-devel&m=104617524910254&w=2 http://lists.kde.org/?l=konsole-devel&m=104617524910254&w=2 The entire concept of exploiting a terminal by supplying hostile input has been around for over 10 years now. Unix veterans and BBS users have been exposed to this type of problem since the very beginning, a newsgroup search can turn up all sorts of exploits, from the ever-popular "flash" program to the abuse of logging features in xterm which were disabled in R5
wtbob 13y ago
What if you're reading netnews in your term? What if you're browsing the web in your term?
mikeash 13y ago
You've never displayed content in your terminal that you didn't generate yourself? Never ran curl against a URL to check out the headers? Never popped open an editor containing source code downloaded from the internet?