[Edu-sig] Interactive tutorial

Dethe Elza delza@alliances.org
Fri, 08 Jun 2001 16:35:11 -0700


on 01/6/8 05:06 PM, Chris Meyers at cmeyers@guardnet.com wrote:

> 06/08/2001 6:23:21 PM, Dustin Mitchell <dustin@cs.uchicago.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Just a warning: this is asking for trouble.  Even with rexec,
> imagine
>> typing 'while 1: pass' and clicking 'eval'.  There's countless
> security
>> problems with putting something like this on a server.  They're
> all
>> soluble, but you'd better be sure you spotted *all* of them :-)
>> 
> 
> You're right of course. A lot can be avoided by having a dedicated
> server cpu (if you hang it up, no HUGE deal), a controlled import
> path, special class for "open", and a thread to act as a timer for
> the above problem. We should brainstorm other possibilities to
> plug. Finally a "break me" contest for Jeff's students ;-)

Or we could revive the Python plugin and run code locally in the browser
(which would also allow some really powerful web-applications to be built
around it).  Unfortunately, this would require a LOT more work.

-- 

Dethe Elza 
Chief Mad Scientist
Burning Tiger Technologies