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from the not-your-daddy's-unix-anymore dept.
Via BSD Now, the old, familiar file command has been completely rewritten by OpenBSD developer Nicholas Marriott, who also happens to be the author of tmux. This new edition takes advantage of modern coding practices and the usual OpenBSD scrutiny. It will run by default as an unprivileged user with no shell, and in a systrace sandbox, strictly limiting what system calls can be made and has a drastically reduced potential for damage which a malicious file could do. Ian Darwin, the original author of the utility, saw the commit and, in what may be a moment in BSD history to remember, replied.
The file utility has been around since the 1970s and is used to determine what type of file something actually is. It hasn't seen a lot of development these days, and it's had its share of security issues as well. Some of those security issues remained unfixed, despite being publicly known for a while. It is run to inspect all kinds of files and was technically designed to be used on untrusted files, so tightening things up improves the situation quite a bit.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @01:40AM
so much better than screen bro! it's like bsd so i can uze it my apple! like whoa! gimme yer new shit nick marriott! i wanna gay marry yo ass like right the fuck now!