Subject: Re: [Fwd: Virus Alert]

From: "Daniel Lynes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 96 00:54:21 +0700

On Sat, 17 Aug 1996 05:47:04 +0300, Lars Wirzenius wrote:

>However, stupid people can also write mail user programs that automatically
>run a program that comes in e-mail. Even more stupid people use such 

UltiMail/2 Lite for OS/2 (comes with the Internet Access Kit) has such
a feature.  However, the program is not automatically run.  You need to
double click on it to run it.

>GNU Emacs had a similar feature (certain magic lines in a file could
>run any Emacs commands automatically when the file was loaded -- and
>Emacs commands are powerful indeed).

GNU Emacs for OS/2 still has this feature.  Very, very dangerous.

---

From: Lars Wirzenius <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 02:59:43 +0300

> GNU Emacs for OS/2 still has this feature.  Very, very dangerous.

Vi and clones aren't completely safe, either. In some circumstances, at
least, they load a .exrc (and/or .vimrc or whatever) from the current
directory (not the home directory). The intention is that you can
customize the editor differently for different projects. However, imagine
downloading an interesting source package from the net, unpacking it,
and editing a file with vi -- oops, you don't have your ~/.profile any
more. At least it is configurable for vi.

The point is that you should know your tools (rtfm, very thoroughly), and
make sure they don't have these gotchas enabled.

I pointed out comp.risks before, I think, but it's good enough that it
can be repeated: read comp.risks. If you enjoy horror movies, you should
really like comp.risks. Or if your mine is as twisted as mine, you could
view it as a funnier replacement of rec.humor.funny.

-- 
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