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From: pst@comdesign.CDI.COM (Paul Traina)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Dangerous hole in Usenet!
Message-ID: <572@comdesign.CDI.COM>
Date: 26 Nov 88 03:12:46 GMT
References: <1971@van-bc.UUCP>
Organization: Network Equipment Technologies, Santa Barbara, California
Lines: 22

mumble.  Since the talk about the "hole" has moved on to the point where we're
actually talking about it publicly,  I'll throw my 2 cents in.

Instead of going for an unshar, even a PC version ported to back to UNIX,
the proper thing to do is NOT ACCEPT COMMANDS OVER THE NET (oops, I didn't
mean to shout... imagine I didn't shout there).  Instead, since spaf's
map postings all have a standardized format,  look for the beginning of
data, strip before it, and strip after then end of data (i.e. his signature).

Now, the problem with this is that it assumes spaf will always post things
using the same format he uses now.  I bet, if we say "pretty please", he'll
make an effort to keep this sort of format.  This seems to be a much more
intelligent way of ripping out map data,  we probably never would have used
shar files (except for the fact that they were around, and they are so bloody
useful!).

Paul
-- 
Paul Traina		pst@condor.cdi.com	...pyramid!comdesign!pst

	OK, look already, I admit I was wrong!  Now don't flame me just
	because you think I'm a jerk on top of everything else.