Linked Questions
10 questions linked to/from Can "cat-ing" a file be a potential security risk?
1
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How does text that is displayed with cat end up trying to execute in the Linux terminal? [duplicate]
Sometimes you accidentally "cat" a binary... only for your terminal to become utterly corrupted, ending up in another code page where all characters are unrecognizable, while your shell spits back at ...
50
votes
5
answers
9k
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Is using 'echo' to display attacker-controlled data on the terminal dangerous?
Imagine the following code:
ATTACKERDATA="$(cat attackerControlledFile.txt)"
echo "${ATTACKERDATA}"
An attacker can, through whatever arbitrary process, modify the contents of attackerControlledFile....
16
votes
5
answers
5k
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Can I check the content of a suspicious file directly on the server using an editor, e.g. vim?
in the Wordpress directory I found some suspicious-looking files with random strings in their name e.g. uxs5sxp59f_index.php. Can I safely check their content ? I have a suspicion that the site has ...
6
votes
3
answers
6k
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Is it safe to connect to random SSH servers? [duplicate]
In a nutshell: How secure are SSH clients? Can servers mess with them?
I saw this Ghost in the Shell bash remake today. Funny enough and there are a few movies (The Matrix, Star Wars, etc) that are ...
1
vote
1
answer
568
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Is nc -l unexploitable?
Suppose I want to set up a server as a test, and I want it exposed to the Internet, giving any IP access. It could be for any reason or no reason.
I don't want it to be at risk of a buffer ...
4
votes
2
answers
558
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Safely decrypting an unsolicited/untrusted PGP message
I am accepting public security vulnerability reports for my website, and I publish my personal PGP (GPG) key to encourage people to encrypt their communications.
Upon receiving an encrypted message, ...
3
votes
2
answers
910
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Is using cat -v an appropriate way to sanitize untrusted text?
It is well known that a terminal tends to trust things which are printed to it through stdout/stderr, making outputting attacker-controlled data to the terminal a risky action. Is using cat -v an ...
2
votes
2
answers
304
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Is it dangerous to receive mail as root?
In the default configuration for the postfix package on Arch Linux (and possibly elsewhere), the aliases file contains the following comment:
...
# Person who should get root's mail. Don't receive ...
0
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1
answer
116
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Implications of running script as argument to shell
Context for the question is the following comment on one of my answers:
@SergiyKolodyazhnyy Prefacing a script name with /bin/bash or even just bash is also a common way to solve the lack of ...
1
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0
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58
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Does `cat -v` provide adequate protection against control character injection and other similar attacks? [duplicate]
I need to cat an untrusted file on a remote server. I'm doing this by logging in with SSH.
There are known risks related to cat-ing untrusted files. See here.
The cat -v option can be used to encode ...