Re: Is Lout a virus spreader?

[Andrew Cassin]

> The definition contains a @Filter which contains this shell script,
> and the document body executes it.  You could bury the nasty definition
> a couple of pages down in the document where the casual observer would
> not notice it.  I guess this is what Ian had in mind.  He says:
> 
>     [The @Filter] feature should only be available if you
>     invoke Lout in an `unsafe' mode, and the default should
>     be to invoke it in a safe mode.
> 
>     Otherwise there is no safe way to format documents
>     supplied by other people.
> 
> Any comments?  Ideas for even nastier things?  Suggestions for what
> should be done about this, if anything?  It would be easy to add a
> command line flag to disable the @Filter feature.  Is that the answer?

Yes I think @Filter (and anything else...) should be disabled by default.
A similar problem exists with ghostscript and the postscript file manipulation
operators.

Actually come to think of it, whats to stop you from burying the commands
in postscript??? Does this mean we should ban @IncludeGraphic etc...

ACAS