Article View: comp.unix.shell
Article #1624Re: Beware xargs security holes
From: David E A Wilson
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 1990 12:38
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 1990 12:38
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At least with SunOS 4.1 the manual page describes exactly what characters
will cause problems.
Arguments read in from the standard input are defined to be
contiguous strings of characters delimited by white space.
Empty lines are always discarded. Blanks and tabs may be
embedded as part of an argument if they are escaped or
quoted. Characters enclosed in quotes (single or double)
are taken literally, and the delimiting quotes are removed.
Outside of quoted strings, a `\' (backslash) will escape the
character it precedes.
Newlines cannot be part of an argument and spaces & quotes would cause so many
problems that you would have to preceed each character with a \ to be sure.
--
David Wilson Dept Comp Sci, Uni of Wollongong david@cs.uow.edu.au
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<1990Oct26.123801.14131@cs.uow.edu.au>Path:
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<63404@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1990Oct9.172621.13484@cbnews.att.com> <271653D6.1CE8@tct.uucp> <4062:Oct1518:22:1290@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <3876@awdprime.UUCP> <tim.656101080@ggumby> <3940@awdprime.UUCP> <1890@necisa.ho.necisa.oz> <1990Oct24.010007.817@virteShow Full Headers
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!attcan!uunet!timbuk!cs.umn.edu!ub.d.umn.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!wolfen!cs.uow.edu.au!david From: david@cs.uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell Subject: Re: Beware xargs security holes Message-ID: <1990Oct26.123801.14131@cs.uow.edu.au> Date: 26 Oct 90 12:38:01 GMT References: <63404@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1990Oct9.172621.13484@cbnews.att.com> <271653D6.1CE8@tct.uucp> <4062:Oct1518:22:1290@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <3876@awdprime.UUCP> <tim.656101080@ggumby> <3940@awdprime.UUCP> <1890@necisa.ho.necisa.oz> <1990Oct24.010007.817@virte Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University Lines: 16