Re: Security problem: lilypond-invoke-editor

[David Kastrup]

Knut Petersen <address@hidden> writes:

> 12 years ago a security problem was introduced into lilypond-invoke-editor.
> On 2017/11/15 the problem was reported to the bug-lilypond mailing
> list by Gabriel Corona.

[...]

> If you do not know if you are affected:
>
> 1.: locate lilypond-invoke-editor
>
> 2. Open lilypond-invoke-editor in your favorite text editor. Search for
>
>        (if (is-textedit-uri? uri)
>          (run-editor uri)
>          (run-browser uri)))))
>
> and replace it with
>
>        (if (is-textedit-uri? uri)
>          (run-editor uri)))))

Stupid question: what does run-editor do to be inherently safer than
run-browser, and what would prevent run-browser from doing the same?

The reason I am asking is that changing the semantics significantly
before 2.20 is icky, yet we would not want to leave a security hole
around we have been given notice of.

So the question is whether there would not be a sort-of trivial patchup
of this preserving the original intent.

For the long haul, it's probably the right fix on GNU/Linux systems.  I
just have no idea how this would affect other systems and possibly our
installers.

-- 
David Kastrup