On Tue, 16 Mar 2004, Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com> wrote:
> I think you are missing the definition of an "answerback" message in
> this context.  

I was.  Thanks for the lesson.  :-)

> Some terminals allow a
> specially formatted message from the host to *change* the answerback
> message.

Is it reasonable to disable this feature in the xterm we ship with NetBSD
(and pkgsrc)?  

> > At any rate, the problem isn't limited to ls(1) in any way.

> True, but root is much more likely to run ls(1) in a random directory
> than to do anything else that exposes this vulnerability.  

"More likely", sure.  But find(1) seems pretty likely, too, just to name
one.  Also, grep/head/tail (invoked with wildcards),  "rm -i", diff, and
tar.  More/less display the filename when '=' is pressed.  Is that safe?  

I'm no expert, and I agree ls(1) is popular, but I don't see that its use
predominates in such a way that justifies any special status or handling. 


--jkl