Re: Troff dangerous.

From: Nic Bellamy (skyat_private)
Date: Sun Jul 25 1999 - 15:42:06 PDT

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    On Sun, 25 Jul 1999, John Robert LoVerso wrote:
    
    > Thus, this affects only systems with groff installed (all Linux and FreeBSD
    > systems, at least).
    
    One Linux distribution that doesn't appear to be vulnerable is Debian
    (tested on 2.1/slink) - the maintainer of the groff package has made the
    -S ("Safer mode") the default, which turns off potentially dangerous
    commands like .opena, .pso, etc.
    
    Hopefully this change can make it into the official GNU groff distribution
    - as useful as these features may be, I doubt the majority of people use
    groff for much more than formatting manpages. Safe defaults are always
    good.
    
    I've also checked OpenBSD 2.5 and FreeBSD 3.2 - the groff on both systems
    defaults to the unsafe behaviour.
    
    Regards,
    	Nic.
    
    P.S. My apologies for the From: address mangling - I received far too many
         vacation messages and spams last time I posted here.
    
    -- Nic Bellamy <skyat_private>
       J. Random Coder.
    



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