Subject: bug#31709: 27.0.50; Wishlist: Perhaps Emacs should load a file when getting a particular signal?

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2018 17:21:46 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> Which functionality? to load a file whose name is fixed in the
> sources?

Yes.

> Having a fixed file name in Emacs that is loaded by an external signal
> would be a terrible security risk, no?

Well...  Would it?  I mean, the file would be something like
~/.emacs.d/sigusr1.el or something.  To send a signal to the Emacs
process you either have to be the user or root, and if you're the user
or root, you already have all the access to the process that you need to
do, well, anything.  Like it was pointed out here earlier, doing the
"make a running Emacs without a server do something" can be achieved
through gdb magic.

It's just something that's very finicky, and loading a file instead
would be something that a normal user could do.

So: The same attack surface that we already have, but a feature that
would be usable for a normal user.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no