Emacs arbitrary code execution and how to avoid it
eshelyaron.com
eshelyaron.com
Anyone wishing to inspect an untrusted file of Emacs Lisp code is likely to use Emacs to do the inspecting, but if either of the popular packages Flymake and Flycheck is enabled, merely opening the untrusted file gives the author of the file the ability to run arbitrary code (because macros are tricky). Even if an Emacs user avoids Flymake and Flycheck, the standard emacs facility for "completing" the names of functions and variables has the same basic vulnerability. Specifically, if the user uses Emacs to open the file, then types the start of the name of a function or variable, then types M-tab (i.e., presses the escape key, then presses the tab key) which attempts to fill in the rest of the name so that user does not have to manually type out the whole name, the arbitrary code is run.
It is clear to me (who was never tempted to use Flymake or Flycheck) what remediation I want: namely I want this "M-tab" functionality (which I have been using and probably most Emacs users have been using) to refrain completely from expanding any macros even though doing so will prevent it from finding out the names of some of the functions and variables I might be trying to insert with the result that sometimes I will have to type out the full name of the function or variable, without assistance.
>AFAICT the earliest public discussion about the security implications of Emacs Lisp macros started in August 2018, when Wilfred Hughes noted that code completion can lead to arbitrary code execution via macro-expansion.
The fact that the maintainers have yet to fix this is one more sign added to a list of 5 or 6 other signs that make me want to migrate away from Emacs.
Not that MELPA couldn't be used to distribute malware either, I just think, as another poster mentioned, these problems are almost more social than technical.
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/malicious-vsc... [2] https://arxiv.org/html/2411.07479v1
Working on a codebase where you can't (heavily?) break things between any commit imposes such a slow pace that it's not completely unreasonable to start from the ground up and just study what made Emacs great and what didn't work too well.
It's surprising how long Emacs has been around and how good of an editor it is. It really makes rewrite attempts such a long stretch that it exhausts the motivation and time out of spirited folks that give it a go, but I think that given how complexity is being modularised and moved out (LSP, DAP, grammars) and newer languages make packaging easier that Emacs will eventually be replaced, definitely without covering everything it can do, but being strong at the average editing session.
Emacs is an interactive Lisp environment that just so happens to have everything you need for a programmable text editor. Text editors are a dime a dozen, and Emacs is far from the only programmable one (although I'm not aware of any with the degree of programmability that Emacs offers). You can find alternatives for pretty much all of Emacs' functions, but you'll have a hard time finding it all in one place.
People have been talking about replacing Emacs itself with another interactive Lisp platform for decades (generally based on Scheme or Common Lisp), but it hasn't happened. I doubt it will. As cool an idea as Lem or Climacs or whatever are, they haven't attracted the user and developer base needed to even begin to approach Emacs' level.
And by and large, Emacs users don't care. We're a small enough group these days that no one is likely to target us with serious malware. We blindly trust Elpa and Melpa and the people who commit code there, and so far it hasn't been a problem. Complacent? Certainly, but that's human nature.
The same can be said about the Linux userland. The Unix model of giving plenty of access to resources and any user file to user processes is outdated.
I find it frustrating something like Firejail or bwrap is not standard. I don't want a compromised program to have easy access to e.g. my SSH keys.
I feel so worried every time I walk into a new ecosystem, and there are new developer tools required. They invariably want me to install things outside their project folder or edit .bashrc or require sudo. It's affecting my sleep. Just running `make` in the wrong folder can start downloading things. It's gotten so bad lately I'm even considering Qubes.
It's like a poorman's QubesOS. I also recommend setting up a userspace firewall like Little Snitch or OpenSnitch. Most malware requires Internet access to do harm. Those provide a good last line of defense. It's a shame the Unix model of giving coarse-grained access to user processes has not been patched. It's not that hard and it's a big security issue.
Can you share your Firejail config?
Alternatively, you can use bwrap --share-net=none emacs.
Bad security is endemic to all GNU projects. gnutls and gnupg come readily to mind, for example. In fact there was an article/blog post making the rounds a few years ago about how the letters "GNU" are an excellent heuristic for broken security models and fatally-flawed crypto.
Emacs is a mosaic of 50 years of computer history, security is not its priority, but I guarantee you that in bug-gnu-emacs any security/network-related patches are most welcome.
How about the fact that GnuPG is predicated upon the web of trust which has been demonstrated not to work, encourages misuse in the form of long-lived identities which discourages key rotation, has no ratchets nor forward secrecy, has multiple internal key parsers, and a littany of vulnerabilities involving authentication and downgrade attacks?
GNU is just organizationally incapable of producing secure code. These tools are not good tools. GnuPG in particular offers absolutely nothing that another single-purpose tool doesn't do better, but for some reason people get emotional and mount all kinds of irrational defenses of it. GPG is not good. It is broken at a fundamental level.
They patched it when they became aware of it in <https://gitlab.com/gnutls/gnutls/-/issues/1011>, it was not "allowed" to go unpatched.
>How about the fact that GnuPG is predicated upon the web of trust
No it is not, the web of trust is one mode of operation out of infinitely many that you can come up with, it's not forced upon the user. It was evangelized for a long time until the keyservers got DOSed. In retrospect obvious, but also gnupg is more-or-less an "activist" project -- big corps and govs are against encryption for the masses by and large. Had it had institutional backing from the beginning (which it never got) it'd have a much more robust model for users to work with.
>encourages misuse in the form of long-lived identities which discourages key rotation
You can automate key rotation with gpg. The long-lived identity argument can be seen as a strength too, short-lived isn't always better.
>a littany of vulnerabilities involving authentication and downgrade attacks?
I'm not aware of these; do you mean that GnuPG is not secure by default in its algorithm list? It chooses compatibility over security, but you're free to change the configuration. I think it's too harsh to say that GnuPG is inadequate because of that.
>GNU is just organizationally incapable of producing secure code.
I don't see why that'd be true, anyone can contribute to GNU so there is nothing inherent about GNU that makes its projects insecure.
>GPG is not good. It is broken at a fundamental level.
Works for me! I use it to sign my git commits and tarball releases, and with gpg-agent I get to authenticate to SSH servers.
Hey, so long as you're cognizant of the fact that everyone credible thinks GPG is at best a security LARP, do what you feel is best.
1) Sign software with sigstore.dev
The issue here is that you delegate trust to places like GitHub or other OIDC providers. You also have to trust Fulcio and their CAs. <https://docs.sigstore.dev/about/security/> for details. Maybe you don't want to do that, in part because you're not guaranteed that the service will remain free, or perhaps you're more serious about security than GitHub.
1-alt) Sign software with minisign.
Maybe I don't want to use Ed25519. Maybe I want to revoke the signatures. There's many issues one may have with minisign.
2) Signing git tags/commits
Advises to use SSH, no explanation why. Advises Ed25519, why not Ed448? The explanation to not use RSA is by linking to <https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/07/08/fuck-rsa/>. I will only quote one thing from this article:
>RSA was an important milestone in the development of secure communications, but the last two decades of cryptographic research have rendered it obsolete.
You can't say it is obsolete when it is still in use. I'm not sure what the author(s) mean by "obsolete", but it is not true that RSA is obsolete. (If Ed25519 breaks but RSA doesn't, who will be obsolete?)
3) Sending files between computers
Here it recommends Magic Wormhole. That's shocking to me, I don't understand why it is recommended. Why not rsync? If you look at the 2016 presentation for Magic Wormhole <https://www.lothar.com/~warner/MagicWormhole-PyCon2016.pdf>, the pitch is that it is especially useful when the computers are unrelated. How often is that the case? Rsync is a much better solution for anyone who wants to transfer files between servers they have access to.
4) Encrypting Backups
Here they recommend tarsnap as "the usual recommendation", I've got to say, it's definitely not the usual recommendation.
5) Encrypting Application Data
They say to use Tink or libsodium. Tink has many implementations in each language, (how does that help security?) and libsodium doesn't support RSA, two things on top of my head that may be deal breakers.
6) Encrypting Files
They recommend age; wishful thinking as most people do not use age. In fact most people do not bother encrypting files, and it is not something that is done often. The author likes to talk about footguns, well there's certainly many footguns to file encryption. This is where the most analysis is on this blog article too, but this is a niche case.
7) Private Messaging
It recommends Signal. What about e-mail?
>(Unless you’re legally required to use PGP because of a government regulation… in which case, why do you care about my recommendations if you’re chained by the ankle to your government’s bad technology choices?)
It comes off as know-it-all.
Let me close with this: Cryptography is infamous for debates. It never ends, and many people have ended up with egg on their face for their claims. Tread carefully and don't rely on others too much!
For example, signing commits with minisign or signify.
These tools don't work well with git or the git forges, and they do not work at all with fossil. (Obviously signify is a good choice if you're using OpenBSD.) Furthermore they lock you in entirely in their choice of algorithm, Ed25519, which may not be what you want (Why not Ed448?)
As far as adoption goes, and adoption is hard to get going, GnuPG is what is used in Linux the most...
git cat-file commit HEAD
tree <tree-hash>
parent <parent-hash>
author <author-name> <author-email> <timestamp>
committer <committer-name> <committer-email> <timestamp>
gpgsig -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
<ascii-armored RFC9580 signature>
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
<commit message>
You can add a patch to git to support more signature types than just OpenPGP. You may then be able to move mountains and get GitHub/others to join in the validation. Finally, if you can find bugs/exploits in GnuPG, you should report them and you will definitely get credit and recognition for them. They are not trivial to find.
Well you are neither, all you do is throw unobjective flames around ("gnupg is trash") and post various claims about bad security without backing them up, implicitly demanding that other people do the leg work of disproving your accusations against the GNU project.
Are you working for Apple by any chance?
No, my background is in aerospace and I'm currently in grad school planning to pivot into a different field.
It was not a "downgrade attack", it was passive cleartext recovery.
Sure, Emacs is not without deficiencies. But what are the alternatives? Name one option that can do things in the way that Emacs allows you to? Don't say 'Vim' - as a die-hard vimmer who uses both daily, I can confidently tell you - it may take decades until Vim becomes sufficiently good to replace Emacs for me. And if you say 'VSCode', I'd simply laugh coughing up org-mode structured headings.
I have never used Emacs (other than briefly starting it up in the 90s, waiting 5 minutes for it to load on my old 386, just to be completely overwhelmed and closing it again) but I have used other tools that I replaced (sometimes multiple times) over the years. And it has never been "smooth". The first few days are full of compromises until you get into a mode of working "with" the new software instead of "against" it. Then it usually begins to make sense and after a week or two you've in business
Learning Emacs (and Vim too) finally made me realize that I was doing things wrong - I needed to be in charge. As a computer programmer, I should be commanding software, not being constrained by it.
Emacs has granted me that power by acting like glue. I don't turn away from useful software; I do use it. I just do it through Emacs, not instead. With Emacs, I make my own rules and I dictate what makes sense.
Most recent practical example? I just joined a team that uses Jira. Lots of people hate Jira (and for good reasons), in my case, I have no choice. So, instead of complaining how cumbersome and stupid Jira is, I decided to use it from Emacs. But instead of wasting time building a "native" extension, I just delegated things to go-jira - a command line client. Now, I can basically type 'FOO-31415' and Emacs automatically, contextually recognizes it as the 'jira ticket number', despite it being plain text. From that point I can retrieve its summary, turn it into a markdown link, browse the ticket, change its fields and status, etc. While anyone else have to waste their time opening Jira in the browser, I can perfectly do things without losing my focus, directly from my editor. That's working "with" software instead of letting software to fight "against" you.
I know right? Sometimes it so ridiculous, it's not even funny. Here's one, totally idiotic example. I use Google Translate directly in Emacs, okay? So, when you enter something like "He was born in 1978", it doesn't translate the date, and that's sensible. But I'm learning a language, I really need to see it e.g. in Spanish like this: "Nació en mil novecientos setenta y ocho", and I didn't want to write every time "He was born in nineteen seventy-eight", so I wrote a tiny function (took me ten minutes) advising google-translate that installs 'number-to-words' npm package and uses it to turn the numbers into words before sending the whole thing to Google Translate API. Totally imbecilic, right? I guess shit ain't no so stupid if thy shit works, yes?
Now, Neovim, VSCode, Jetbrains, and Sublime, they all have similar plugins for translation. I wonder if any experienced user would ever bother with something like that? I bet they just wouldn't. It wouldn't occur to them to even consider that as a minor annoyance. Emacs on the other hand, changes the way you think about efficiency and being in control.
I think this is the difference with Emacs. Not only is it primarily a lisp environment and then secondarily a text editor, but it goes above and beyond to add general capabilities for modifying its own behavior. With most any other piece of software I can think of, you are relying upon the developers to provide you with the exact APIs to control the software. With Emacs, you control the entire lisp environment, and therefore control the editor running within it.
edit: Siri typo
Time has to be spent, no matter what: you can either adapt your workflow to match the design of specialized apps, or you can choose to go against the norm and manage it on your own terms.
I vividly remember my own misery when trying to find the most optimal, ideal note-taking solution. I went through Evernote, Workflowy, Google Todos, Google Keep, Todoist, Notion, Trelo, Remember the Milk, Obsidian, and some other options.
On the other hand, I have spent a long time studying and customizing Org-mode. I can say with absolute certainty that the net positive ROI from this effort is far greater than it could ever be with any other option.
"Ignorance is bliss", right? Less tech-savvy people genuinely live in blissful ignorance of the endless possibilities, the ways and the methods available. Programmers are different - they can spot your bullshit right away, "you're holding it wrong" vibes don't sit well with them, you don't tell them "users don't know what they want", they'd get annoyed and will try to find a better way - writing scripts, hacking your app, setting up unconventional keybindings, etc.
Emacs is for programmers, for tinkerers who prefer to deal with computing on their own terms. I know the feeling - some new, shiny app comes out that makes ripples in HN threads, and you'd feel old, cranky, and left out with your not-so-shiny, brutally simple yet efficient Emacs UI, thinking that maybe this is the time when you finally have to move away from it. Then you try that shiny new feature everyone so enthusiastically talks about and think, "Meh, that's it? Is that what they're so excited about? I can't believe now I have to use this shit because everyone else does..." And then a few weeks later, someone builds an Emacs package for it.
I never regret time spent on customizing Emacs because I've gotten to the point where I know exactly how to get the most use out of that exercise. It's nothing but pure, unadulterated pragmatics. The notion that Emacs users waste their time configuring it instead of doing real work is a myth. It's like saying that the cook spends too much time sharpening the blade instead of actual cooking. A great chef knows a great deal about his knives and always keeps them very sharp, but he's not in a knife-sharpening business.
Am I missing anything here? E.g. should I expect pieces of C code that handle completion in elisp mode?
Probably, yes. „org-babel“ can execute shell code inside an org document but always asks the user before it does. You can disable this if you want to. No big deal. Should totally work like this in elisp-mode, too.
Looking at elisp-completion-at-point and likely deeper into elisp--completion-local-symbols, I'd try to find where macroxpansion occurs, and make it conditional. Same for the explicit emacs-lisp-macroexpand.
I would also search for `(eval ` in general and maybe put it under a buffer-local flag, too, so that you won't press C-x C-e or C-M-x and execute malicious code by mistake, when you know you're working on a piece of malicious code.
Maybe instead of a defcustom, it should rather be a minor elisp-paranoid-mode which would do all kinds of things to prevent execution of the code in the buffer, or the code the buffer refers to, etc.
This seems like a really useful functionality to have in the context where you actually do trust the files, but it is wildly insecure and an unexpected trapdoor, to have simple files executing things when you open them with a simple text editor…
Probably going to add similar protections here? Basically, I'd assume if it is your first time visiting a file, macros won't be expanded during autocompletion.
I think the implications are really unexpected for “new” users (where “new” could be pretty generously defined, I mean, I know a couple people who use vim IRL, I think they would not expect this… it is the sort of thing you know about if you are somebody who goes online to talk about text editors I think). And these are also the sort of users who are used to seeing shebangs and other line noise at the top of files, not understanding it, and ignoring it.
I think we’re only being protected by the fact that spreading a virus though command-line text editors is… going to result in not a ton of hits.
Helping me finish typing the name of a function or variable ("completion") is not the sort of thing I expected (till today) the maintainers of Emacs to be so eager to do that they'd start running code that I never asked to be run.
Jokes aside, if you're considering Vi-like editors (and assuming you haven't already done your research -- which by the sounds of it, you may well have):
- I recommend going for Neovim over classic Vim at this point. The first-class Lua support for building out your configs and working with extensions is a big quality-of-life improvement over just VimL, and it's a more portable skill with fewer surprises. As a bonus, this gives you access to a world of shockingly high-quality extensions that require Lua to run.
- If you want a decent starting point before you start tweaking a ton of settings, Spacevim is it. I haven't used it extensively but I've only heard good things.
- I recommend against trying to use Emacs bindings in Vim if you can help it. I used these when I initially moved over (at this point about a decade ago) and they were clunkier than both Emacs's bindings and Vim's native bindings. Learning how to work with Vim's modes is an investment that pays off as quickly as a few days with intense use, or a few weeks with more casual use.
- `vim-arpeggio` (or the native chording support in newer versions of Neovim) is your friend for avoiding `<Esc>`-induced repetitive-strain injury.
Then tell me please, how often do you do your research in Vim, using LaTeX embeddings while taking annotations to a pdf that's rendered in the adjacent window?
How often do you take notes, while watching a YouTube video while controlling the playback, speed and volume from your editor? I can watch the video, while following the transcript karaoke-style, pause, speed-up, mute the video whenever I want (so I can start typing), I can grab the pieces of transcript and ask an LLM to give me explanations, etc.
Do you read RSS in Vim? Are any RSS readers as well-integrated and feature-rich as elfeed.el in Emacs? I honestly doubt it. And it's not a matter of skepticism over the quality of Vim extensions. Emacs has far fewer active users and even fewer of those who build things in Elisp, yet it remains the most integratable thing ever. The thing is - unlike VSCode, Vim, Sublime, and IntelliJ - Emacs allows you to change any given behavior of any function - built-in or third-party - with such great granularity that is simply not possible anywhere else.
What about email? Is there anything close to the level of notmuch, mu4e or gnus? I seriously doubt any vim plugins provide the same level of integration.
Do you manage your Jira (or whatever project management) you do from Vim?
Do you control your browser from Vim? I do it from Emacs and it's very cool.
Can you perform a dynamic search on YouTube, Google, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, your browser history and other places while typing the query only once? I do that all the time in Emacs.
So, Emacs is not about keybindings. Because you can change them in a way that no other editor lets you do. In Emacs you can use whatever modal or non-modal editing flavor you want, but that's beyond the point.
Hey, any chance you can expand on how you do this, or just share configs?
Thanks!
The multi-cursors, those I want. But I'm willing to wait for Neovim to get them.
So now there is an Emacs CVE, and it's a big one. But if you're going to jump ship for something more secure, it would be woefully misguided to go for Vim.
Any editor that goes for expressive power and flexibility is going to have security issues sooner or later. If you want safe, you'll need to cut features, pick something simple.
As far as I'm concerned, the more readymade options, the better. Thanks to you and sevensor for adding recommendations!
This is fine, I think. Using C-w is more convenient than <Esc>diw. I also find C-a and C-e quite convenient, although you need plugins for these (tpope's vim-rsi is good).
I might be worth starting without them, though, so they learn not to rely on them too much.
That being said, I use home-row mods, which makes Control a lot easier to use than regular keyboards.
Spacemacs defaults to vim bindings and it's easily my favorite editor, while saving you from (some of) the endless config tweaking.
As I understand it, the vulnerability is that viewing untrusted elisp code may lead to arbitrary code execution. Personally, I don’t remember a case where I would view elisp code without the intent of running it.
You can imagine some variant of this attack including a carefully designed Emacs Lisp payload, which the unsuspecting and desperate-for-a-job victim might open in Emacs. Surprising that the Emacs maintainers didn't fix it as quickly as you'd hope.
Maybe that could be used as a starting point to implement a security strategy for some not totally trusted packages. It could complicate things, but hopefully not too much.
Emacs can infact be great for security. Its code and language are very nice and well documented and if you care to understand the code you are running and you are THAT concerned about security it can be an excellent aid toward peace of mind.
> if you care to understand the code you are running and you are THAT concerned about security it can be an excellent aid toward peace of mind.
Elisp can be more difficult to review that Rust. It is much more difficult to hide malicious pieces of code, inside a Rust program that in Elisp. Elisp is pretty powerful as many lisps are, but you can write Emacs modules in Rust. See ubolonton's project on github. I tested it at some point and it works.
>if you have a lots crypto assets
If i had crypto assets, (which i don't), then the correct way to organize money units, tokenized pieces of housing, tokenized pieces of cars, a thousandth of a car for example, is to use an identity which can create children identities, and each child identity can be revoked on demand by the root identity or the parent identity. Then you only really have to keep secure the root identity, everything else is revocable.
> Elisp can be more difficult to review that Rust.
Im not a rust programmer, so to each their own I guess. To me it is pretty easy to spot weird lisp code while rust is a headache to me. However as far as I know rust also has macros and unsafe options. Im also wary of anything that markets itself as "safe" because overconfidence is enemy of safety
The point about crypto assets is that you dont normaly use an editor to interact with it (or any full blown computation) and security is pretty straighforward. However if you are developing a software product it is less straighforward. You will use an IDE, probably some third packages, etc. Lots of ways something can go wrong
Processes can forfeit the permission to do certain things. similarily you could allow functions to forfeit the permission to call certain functions down the callstack (transitively, even) or only allow a function to be called from certain contexts/functions.
While certainly a (minor) performance hit when done dynamically, it should be possible, especially when using an interpreted language. I have not yet seen this done in the context of programming languages, which is probably due to how difficult it would be to set a proper scope and get it right. If A is forbidden from deleting files, for example, but the program allows it to send messages to B (perhaps even by user choice), which is allowed to do so, then that is a natural escape hatch unless B is specifically designed to take this into account. Nonetheless, a hybrid system should be possible to achive, which would at least improve the situation by a non-negligible margin.
In the spirit of the original article: Most editor plugins don't need to interact with other processes or the file system directly, and instead could only affect an associated buffer. In this scenario, I believe that it is actually possible to solve this issue. For other applications, such as git integration, the mass of code that would have to be inspected can at least be reduced.
I just had the joy of kicking off a large crawl across my file system(s), expecting it to take some time, so I kicked it off just before I went to bed. This morning I arrived to a dialog "Terminal would like to access...", which naturally stalled my 3 command pipeline in its tracks, thus eliminating the primary benefit of doing the job overnight in the first place.
The other day, I guess I installed Discord, or updated it, or something. Anyway, Discord was asking for keystrokes from other apps. "Why!?"
Why does my IDE need root access to install?
What happens if I don't let random program crawl my network?
As a carbon based user, "capabilities" are a pain in the neck.
Windows lost this battle decades ago, when every. single. new program required "admin" privs to be installed. Every single one. Heck, I bet Calculator asked for it. To wit we numb users, wanting to just "use the software" said, "yes. Yes. YES! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!" to the point where you just gave it no second glance at all.
Capabilities look great on paper. They're fine for things like systemd and daemons and "stuff administrator folks" install.
For human beings, not so much.
Emacs would have to start another process for Elisp analysis and code completion. That would be a massive reachitecture of the system.
(rx (eval (call-process "touch" nil nil nil "/tmp/owned")))
I'm specifically talking about scenarios such as "you set debug-on-error."
To that end, the proposal would probably be something like "flymake/flycheck" use a child emacs process to query the code, but the user evaluating the code would still be done in the main emacs?
By that I mean, in an ideal world, nefarious code should never end up on my system in the first place. Regardless of whether it gets ran, regardless if whether it is properly sandboxed to avoid damage. At the end of the day, I don't want bad code in my system at all.
"Easier said than done" is why I said "right solution, right problem, wrong time." But it comes at a cost. A rather extreme cost, in some cases. Walled garden app stores. Runtime overhead.
Development overhead. I'm not just a user, I'm also a developer, so these things end up being roadblocks I have to navigate. And I have to navigate them for no reason of my own. I am not trying to steal my users' data. But in a way, I am getting punished for the actions of others.
Anyway. No solutions here.
Real world analogy: construction sites are dangerous, but you can't outlaw the bulldozer. It is a necessary piece of equipment. The best you can do is take precautions. Hard hats, high visibility clothing, audible warnings, etc.
If you are working on code for any other language, it is probably using an LSP or other form of child processes, right?
You can pretty easily set up Emacs to work that way for any language with a REPL.
(defmacro hi-macro ()
(eval-when-compile
(message "hi you")))
(hi-mac
Edit: OK. As per the mailing list. I guess it is a feature then.
(let ((fooo (eval-when-compile (progn (message "hi you")))))
foo ;; <---- C-M-i here
)Most of the packages and modules that the Lisp systems have are shipped as source code, and compiled on site. That suggests that innocuous importing of a internet sourced module can wreak havoc on your system just by loading it, you don't even have to run it.
Granted, it's not quite the same as having something like auto-complete drain your bitcoin wallet, but it's close.
Most every other eco system you actually have to run the code itself to be worried about an exploitation (which, mind, in today's world is a low bar, but a bar nonetheless).
I don't think that this is exclusive to python either.
(setq-default flycheck-disabled-checkers '(emacs-lisp emacs-lisp-checkdoc))
He also forgot the case of ordinary functions being called in the coda. Similar problem as Office VBA startup code.
Security is basically a resource allocation problem. There are an infinity of attack vectors, so which ones should one be concerned about? Probably not this one.
AS for macros in lisp, they are not as ubiquitous as it might seem to an outsider. I write lisp professionally. I write one macro a month, if that, and often I rewrite it as a function afterwards. Saying that macros are ubiquitous in lisp is a meme. To most lispers macros are last resort
When you load a Lisp source code file, each of the forms and that file is read and executed.
You know like pretty much any scripting language.
You don't need a macro to perpetrate damage.
Bash doesn't have macros. yet it's a very bad idea to do this:
wget https://url | bash
Besides compiling any other tooling which expands macros is vulnerable to execution. As we can see in this article, there our situations when if you're working with list code inside Emacs, it will expand the macros.
If you were going to blindly run the code anyway, that makes no difference. But developers often look at untrusted source code with no intention to run it and not expecting to do anything harmful just by sitting in their editor.
In principle Lisp macros could be sandboxed. The vast majority of macros do not need to do any system access. They just look at their argument code pieces and calculate a new piece of code, without any side effects or accessing anything in the system.
These are still the finest stay-organized and Git UI modules I've ever seen, respectively, and are still enough to make sure I have Emacs on every system I use.
For coding, I've gone over to VS Code (and sometimes Jetbrains).
As a sibling comment pointed out, many, if not most, long term heavy Emacs users are not using it for coding.
That's not true. I have worked in number of teams where Emacs users were the majority. Most of them didn't use Org, some of them never used Magit, yet they've used it for coding.
If most Emacs users aren't using it for programming, don't you think it's silly to narrow pick SW professionals as your population to sample from?
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/36001/vim-model...
https://lwn.net/Articles/20249/
Circa 2002-2003, and the LWN comment describing the exact same scope:
"""emacs is the same, if not worse. (See the node File Variables in the info docs.) You get not only to set random buffer-local variables, but also to evaluate arbitrary lisp code. Ouch!"""
Funny story once checking a bug report, OG founder of the company dropped in: "I like to check in on my bug reports every 10 years..."
It's not just an open-source issue, hard decisions are hard decisions.
Whenever you folks say "just use Bla-bla instead of Emacs", you don't realize it's not even at the level of comparison between iOS and Android.
Emacs provides unique capabilities that other applications simply cannot match in terms of simplicity and power.
Like take for example Dired. Sure, there are number of vim plugins, but none of them match the full power of Emacs' Dired of treating directories as editable text.
Or take Org-mode's source blocks. You can for example execute a piece of javascript, then pipe the result into another block in python, then the results of that into sql and finally output it as a chart.
Or you can use source blocks for literate programming. I use them for managing my dotfiles - my entire system is almost immutable, not at the same level of Nix, but still very nice.
Or take an Emacs package called consult-omni - you can type a search query once and it dynamically dispatches queries to Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, your browser history and other places, aggregating the results in one place. Crazy thing is that the package builts on top of another package which itself uses the built-in functions of Emacs.
The power comes from ability to precisely change a behavior of any given function - built-in or a third party - that precision is just impossible in Vim, VSCode or IntelliJ - in Emacs, you can change specific point of any given function without having to rewrite it.
It's not a matter of "faith" as you put it. People who choose Emacs don't do that because of some dogmas, beliefs or folklore. Emacs has earned its reputation as the most extensible software for sound technical reasons. Naturally, any powerful tool can be wielded for both constructive and destructive purposes. But you can't just suggest replacing a Caterpillar 797F Mining Truck with a electric scooter because of 'security concerns' - what am I supposed to do with my 400-ton payload of customizations?
Thanks for downvoting! I'm not sure why that isn't a valid approach, but then, I've never understood why people have a competition between a text editor and a Lisp machine that has an implementation of that text editor in it