Autoplay considered harmful

[Dan Kegel]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
says that USB devices are being sold with infected
autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"

I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...

[James McKenzie]

Dan Kegel wrote:
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
> says that USB devices are being sold with infected
> autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"
>
> I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...

+1

Let's not forget the infected CDs as well.

James McKenzie

[John Klehm]

> Dan Kegel wrote:
> > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
> > says that USB devices are being sold with infected
> > autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"
> >
> > I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...

Completely not supported or disabled by default?

--John Klehm

[Robert Lövlie]

John Klehm wrote:
> > Dan Kegel wrote:
> > > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
> > > says that USB devices are being sold with infected
> > > autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"
> > >
> > > I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...
>
> Completely not supported or disabled by default?
>
> --John Klehm

The autorun.inf files are simple enough to support with a simple script,
and they usually launch a windows program. This can be implementet in an
end system with minimum effort and no changes to the wine codebase.
I'm firmly opposed to wine polling disk drives for new mediums and
autoplaying them by default.

--
Robert Lövlie
topace(a)oijk.net

[Dan Kegel]

On Feb 16, 2008 7:08 AM, John Klehm <xixsimplicityxix(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dan Kegel wrote:
> > > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
> > > says that USB devices are being sold with infected
> > > autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"
> > >
> > > I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...
>
> Completely not supported or disabled by default?

By default, I guess.   Some customers might know their cd-rom's
are safe, and we should let them enable it via a control panel, I guess.
But autoplay support is kind of a distro packaging thing, I think,
so we probably have to discuss this with whoever builds the packages...?

[Steven Edwards]

On Feb 16, 2008 8:58 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
> says that USB devices are being sold with infected
> autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"
>
> I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...

I was actually thinking about this today. The right method would be to
use HAL notification events to prompt the user if they want to autorun
when sticking a new cdrom in. There could even be warning text in the
dialog so that if it pops up with other device insertion, the user
would know that it could be a virus.

-- 
Steven Edwards

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and
that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

[Evil Jay]

The purist in me says that WINE should not improve on Windows - it
should behave the same way, warts and all.  If I had a vote, I'd vote to
enable it by default, but give the user an easy way to disable it in
winecfg.  (And I'd immediately disable it the first time I ran Winecfg!)

But, whatever you guys decide to do is cool - as long as you keep
cranking out this great package!  :)

-Jesse



Steven Edwards wrote:
> On Feb 16, 2008 8:58 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
> > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/BU47V0VOH.DTL&ty...
> > says that USB devices are being sold with infected
> > autorun apps.  "If you plug in, you're already infected,"
> >
> > I'd say that's a pretty good argument for not supporting autoplay...
>
> I was actually thinking about this today. The right method would be to
> use HAL notification events to prompt the user if they want to autorun
> when sticking a new cdrom in. There could even be warning text in the
> dialog so that if it pops up with other device insertion, the user
> would know that it could be a virus.

[Detlef Riekenberg]

On Sa, 2008-02-16 at 11:09 -0500, Steven Edwards wrote:
> I was actually thinking about this today. The right method would be to
> use HAL notification events to prompt the user if they want to autorun
> when sticking a new cdrom in. There could even be warning text in the
> dialog so that if it pops up with other device insertion, the user
> would know that it could be a virus.

It is the right way, but this must be done in the Desktop Environment.

The new Gnome Version has support for this features (Autoplay).



-- 
 
By by ... Detlef