Re: Windows MS-DOS Device Name DoS vulnerabilities

[pgut001 () cs auckland ac nz (Peter Gutmann)]

Dennis Jenkins <djenkins () usb com> writes:

> He will access the device.  This is documented in the book "Undocumented Dos"
> (author, editor, press I don't remember).  

My copies claims to be by Schumann et al, published by Addison-Wesley.

> In the early days of DOS, there was a reason why this was done.  But I don't
> remember that either.

Speaking of the early days of DOS, this bug has been around for a long, long
time.  I remember being able to crash BBS's 10 years ago [0] by uploading zip
files containing reserved names which would bring down the system when the BBS
software scanned the file.  I think later versions of Pkzip would try and check
for reserved names to try and prevent this.

Peter.

[0] With the permission of the sysop, done as a demonstration.