full-disclosure - Windows file I/O not internationalized

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

From: psz at maths.usyd.edu.au (Paul Szabo)
Subject: Windows file I/O not internationalized

We have a Windows application (TCL script really) that wants to find the
IP address of the PC it runs on; it effectively does

  cmd /c "ipconfig > ip.txt"

then reads the file. This works fine everywhere, except... I have a user
with WinXP set to Chinese language. For this user, the file stops after
"Ethernet adapter" (contains just 53 characters). Doing ipconfig without
redirection in a CommandPrompt window works fine and says the equivalent
of "Local Area Connection" in Chinese.

Seems to me that file I/O redirection, angle-brackets or pipe symbols,
stop at the first non-English character. Is this a known bug or feature?
If so, does anyone know a workaround? Otherwise, does this have security
implications?

Cheers,

Paul Szabo - psz@...hs.usyd.edu.au  http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/u/psz/
School of Mathematics and Statistics  University of Sydney   2006  Australia