On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 03:01:50PM +1000, Tim Connors wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Aug 2020, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > the "security issues" comes from blindly executing code/commands that you
> > don't understand.

ok, yeah, I should have started that line with "MOST OF"

> > treat everything as just an example that needs further research. never 
> > execute
> > something posted by someone else(*) unless you know what it does and how 
> > and why.
>
> It theoretically is not safe to simple paste the selection into an editor
> before vetting it.  Through CSS and javascript, what you select in a
> browser and what ends up in the copy-paste buffer are frequently
> different.

It's true that there's a risk if you're copying from a web page (or something
else that does css and/or javascript - or any kind of scripting, there's a
difference between "dead" static data and active scripting, which is one of
the reasons I hate over-use of javascript in the web, it's analagous to the
difference between a live virus and a dead one).  Especially so if you're
just copying from some random site you have no reason to trust....and less
so if you're copying from a well-known, mostly-trustworthy site like one of
the stack-exchanges (but remember that this still doesn't protect you from
errors).

not true if you're copying plain text from a text mail client like mutt.

also not much of a risk if instead of copy-paste, you save the email or web
page or whatever to a text file and then extract what you need from the text
file.

craig

--
craig sanders <[email protected]>
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