bug#31709: 27.0.50; Wishlist: Perhaps Emacs should load a file when getting a particular signal?

[Phil Sainty]

On 2018-06-06 04:36, Phil Sainty wrote:
> On 2018-06-06 04:24, Robert Pluim wrote:
> > What if this hypothetical emacs was deliberately started without a
> > server running, since it contains sensitive information? Starting a
> > server when receiving a signal has now opened up access to that emacs
> > where none existed before.
>
> Certainly -- if we *are* treating emacs servers in general as a 
> security
> risk, then the concern seems valid.

Of course if the attacker can edit files in the user's ~/.emacs.d then
there's already nothing to stop them from adding a custom [sigusr1]
binding to the user's init file or some other loaded file in their
config (or site-start.el or a core library if they had root), and
enabling the behaviour we're discussing for the user's future emacs
sessions (albeit in a way which might be more apparent to the user,
depending on how they manage their config).

-Phil