[23427] in bugtraq
Crashing X
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (scott)
Fri Dec 7 18:31:23 2001
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
From: scott <smackenz@sdf.lonestar.org>
Reply-To: smackenz@brad.ac.uk
To: bugtraq@securityfocus.com
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 21:26:53 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <01120720451400.04541@mainframe>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
I have discovered a little bug in K Desktop 2.1.2 that crashes your X Server.
By using the konqueror web browser and inputting around 9000+ A's (or
whatever) into a search box (for instance www.yahoo.com's web search box) -
this will crash your X environment.
I have successfully done it using 9000 A's on one search box (crashing X
instantly), then I used 90'000 and it also worked - but without immediate
effect (took a few seconds).
It also sometimes seems to work by just pasting 900000 A's into a search box
and before it even displays the A's X crashes. (note: If you want it to
display the A's before X crashes paste 9000, then as soon as you click to
start the search - its bye bye X).
Sorry but I can only test it on KDE 2.1.2, because I have no other systems
available right now.
By the way:
[smackenz@mainframe smackenz]$ uname -a
Linux mainframe 2.4.2-2 #1 Sun Apr 8 20:41:30 EDT 2001 i686 unknown
(Rehat 7.1)
(KDE 2.1.2)
(this works in Gnome and KDE using with the konqueror web browser)
To test simply use a shell and type:
perl -e 'print "A" x 9000'
Then copy these, and paste them into a search form.
Also I tried this in netscape and it didn't work so it suggests its a
konqueror error somewhere or other.
Cheers
Scott Mackenzie
