xpdf vulnerability - CAN-2003-0434 [LWN.net]

xpdf vulnerability - CAN-2003-0434

Posted Jul 4, 2003 0:23 UTC (Fri) by joey (subscriber, #328)
Parent article: xpdf vulnerability - CAN-2003-0434

netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' is not safe, if you are expanding
%s before passing this to the shell. %s could contain any number of single quotes.

Never pass untrusted data through a shell. Use exec.

(Log in to post comments)

xpdf vulnerability - CAN-2003-0434

Posted Jul 5, 2003 18:35 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

Or, if you're programming Perl or Ruby, the system() function can take one string argument (which then is expanded), or a list of arguments, which is not expanded, and much safer.