Bugtraq mailing list archives

Re: Sendmail 8.6.10: what's different?


From: mouse () Collatz McRCIM McGill EDU (der Mouse)
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 16:06:32 -0500


cleanstrcpy(), referred to several times above, is like strcpy, but
it strips newlines and copies only a restricted set of characters:
letters, digits, and !#$%&'*+-./^_`{|}~

The reason for that set of characters are that it is the characters
that "divide" input into tokens in /bin/sh.

CERT once recommended me to use the following set of filtered
characters "\"*&|$;'\\=?<>!()\n{}[]^`"

I don't quite understand what you mean.  The list I quoted is
characters that cleanstrcpy() _is_ willing to copy.  Neither the set
sendmail copies nor the set sendmail refuses to copy contains all the
token delimiters in any shell I am aware of - for example, . is copied
and @ isn't, but both are plain characters in every shell I know of;
and ' is copied but " isn't, and both are special in every shell I know
of.  This is why I found the choice of characters hard to understand.
I would almost think it is excluding some list of mail-addressing
characters, except that it copies ! and %....

                                        der Mouse

                            mouse () collatz mcrcim mcgill edu



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