bugtraq - Re: gnome-terminal, xfce4-terminal, terminator and others write scrollback buffer to disk

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Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 07:57:47 +0700 (NOVT)
From: "Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov" <D.Yu.Bolkhovityanov@....nsk.su>
To: Mark Krenz <mark@...o.com>
cc: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: gnome-terminal, xfce4-terminal, terminator and others write
 scrollback buffer to disk

On Tue, 6 Mar 2012, Mark Krenz wrote:

> Testing and reproducing the issue:
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>  On Linux, if you want to see this behavior, you can do the following:
>
>   1. Open one of the affected terminal emulators.
>   2. Make sure its scrollback buffer is set to something like 500 or
>      more so that it saves some of the scrollback.
>   3. In the terminal, run:
>           ls -l /proc/$PPID/fd | grep deleted
>      If enough data has entered the scrollback buffer, you should start
>      to see unlinked (deleted) files called /tmp/vte.*
>
>  To see the data that has been logged to /tmp, you use a command like
>  strings to view the contents of your /tmp partition.  If you have a
>  seperate /tmp partition and its located on /dev/sda2, this could be done
>  like this:
>
>       strings /dev/sda2 | less

 	While the affected terminal is still running, it is much easier to 
directly read /proc/PID/fd/NNN files.

 	So, I suspect it can even be possible to see a "live mirror" of a 
running terminal session (yes, that is possible anyway via ptrace() or 
/proc/FD/mem, but reading well-known-formatted files is much-much-much 
easier).

 	_________________________________________
 	  Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov
 	  The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
 	  Novosibirsk, Russia