Is it always safe to type [i.e. run Get-Content] on a file in PowerShell?

Question

Supposedly an attacker sends me a malicious readme.txt and I'm going to open PowerShell and run type readme.txt.

Can the attacker via any sort of control char sequences or using any other technique cause a non-expected behavior this way?

Answer 1

No, but if its a binary disguised as a text file, you'll just see a bunch of jibberish in the output.

Personally, I'd check the file type prior to running any commands with the file. On *nix machines you can use the file {filename} command. For Windows see this post on SuperUser.