>Whilst this isn't strictly speaking a security bug, it borders on >Sun acting in a very "big brother" manner which is frightening! > >For those of you using Sun's SUNWspro C compiler package, beware! >The binaries "c89" and "cc" appear to automagically send an email >to "ut-ccat_private" with a list of C compiler commands, >including some sort of cpu-time summary. Extract as follows: > >cc -E (I have a strong sense of deja-vu, wasn't this discussed before on BUGTRAQ? Ah wait, Usenet Oct '98) This compiler "feature" only exists in the pre-FCS compilers (i.e., Alpha and Beta products) and other pre-FCS workshop products. It was documented in several locations, perhaps even in the "must read and agree to" license, but I think it was pretty prominent. (The websites have gone now that FCS is here) (Some older compilers inadvertedly left the code in) 4.0? 4.1? That is, unless you have a domainname set on your system that ends in .sun.com; in that case usage tracking also happens with your FCS compiler. So it's not all that big brotherish as you make it out: - for alpha/beta only - documented how to switch off (in several places) - the cc command lines forwarded only include the options, not the option parameters or file name arguments. (-DFOO becomes -D, -Lpath gives -L etc ; file.c is not listed) Nothing sinister, just alpha/beta users helping to gather statistics about compiler option usage. (And us internal Sun folk who get to test drive all stuff) Of course, we could argue whether this should be an opt-in or opt-out thing till we're blue in the face, but let's not. Suffices to say that I've long since disabled most outgoing mail from my system. Casper
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