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Awatmath.1916 net.unix-wizards utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!watmath!dmmartindale Fri Mar 5 10:26:33 1982 Re: Security and Smart Terminals Just "mesg n" is not necessarily sufficient to prevent people from exploiting smart terminals, at least on 4BSD - If you've done a 'biff y' you get the initial part of a mail message displayed on your terminal by comsat, regardless of whether there is general write on it. To be absolutely sure that you can't have this happen to you, you'd have to avoid reading your mail or reading any other user's files while in su, just in case someone sends you a letter bomb, or leaves a file lying around in the hope you will read it sometime. Admittedly, it's a lot harder to do it undetected using the latter methods.

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