Re: vulnerabilities of postscript printers

[Elizabeth Zwicky <zwicky () greatcircle com>]

> I've never heard of anyone suggesting you could copy data
> from one port to another, if only because there's no such thing as an
> open file in postscript.

Sure there is. PostScript has all the standard file handling, among
other things for handling peripherals for font storage. Alas, I am
moving at the moment and don't have my PostScript manuals to hand,
but, for instance, I've written code that used PostScript filehandling
in GhostScript to modify files in a user's home directory, and code that
used the hard drive in a printer that had one for font caching. In general,
PostScript printers use PostScript as their underlying OS. It is
quite certainly a full programming language.

> Of course if you had a postscript printer AND a the postscript cookbooks
> you'd instantly get a better understanding.

Umm, apparently not. Although the PostScript manuals are handy, you
need to dig pretty deep into them to get to relatively little-used
commands.

        Elizabeth Zwicky
        zwicky () greatcircle com