the Undernet #linux channel faq
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Can someone send me...

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: We don't send binaries via IRC. It's highly dangerous for you to accept them; you don't know what has been put into such a thing, for one thing, and for another, each system is slightly different in terms of what libraries are present, etc.

Let me re-emphasise this: Never ever run a binary you get off IRC. In fact, be highly suspicious about any binary you download off the internet. The practice of downloading binary RPMs or DEBs and blindly installing them is dubious enough, but to run a binary you get off IRC is just plain bloody stupid.

Case in point: Some asswipe from Brazil, out of the blue, DCC'd me a file with the innocent name, "taglines". I accepted it, deciding there was no harm in having a peek. Maybe it was funny. I viewed it with less, and it turned out to be binary. Before the said asswipe even had a chance to say, "Run this as root", I had already determined that this programme was a primative form of rootkit. The individual concerned was promptly and permanently kick-banned from the channel. The friendly people at his ISP were most interested in hearing of his activities, and promptly dealt with him.

If you have a binary of which you are suspicious, use the programme strings to examine the strings that are present. In the case of 'taglines', there were interesting lines like chmod 777 /etc/passwd and several other nasties, and they showed up like a lighthouse with strings. Even if nothing suspicious becomes immediately apparent, it could still be dangerous. There are plenty of ways of hiding such telltale strings. If in doubt, don't.

If you feel compelled to try it notwithstanding these warnings, don't do it as root.

The correct and safest thing to do is to build a binary yourself from the source, which leads us to the next part of this answer...

We don't send source, either, because if we got it off of the Internet, so can you. Don't ask us to waste our time and bandwidth sending you something you can get yourself. Remember, most of us are stuck on the wrong end of a 33k6 link.


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