Re: Troff dangerous. (fwd)

[CyberPsychotic <mlists_(_at_)_gizmo_(_dot_)_kyrnet_(_dot_)_kg>]

Maybe it would make sence to turn of all those .opena/.pso/.sy commands in
groff? no piece of system relies on that so far I know.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 10:42:06 +1200
From: Nic Bellamy <sky_(_at_)_WIBBLE_(_dot_)_NET_(_dot_)_INVALID>
To: BUGTRAQ_(_at_)_SECURITYFOCUS_(_dot_)_COM
Subject: Re: Troff dangerous.

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 <sky_(_at_)_wibble_(_dot_)_net_(_dot_)_invalid>
   J. Random Coder.