this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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curl https://some-url/ | sh

I see this all over the place nowadays, even in communities that, I would think, should be security conscious. How is that safe? What's stopping the downloaded script from wiping my home directory? If you use this, how can you feel comfortable?

I understand that we have the same problems with the installed application, even if it was downloaded and installed manually. But I feel the bar for making a mistake in a shell script is much lower than in whatever language the main application is written. Don't we have something better than "sh" for this? Something with less power to do harm?

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[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 33 points 2 days ago (4 children)

All the software I have is downloaded from the internet...

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You should try downloading the software from your mind brain, like us elite hackers do it. Just dump the binary from memory into a txt file and exe that shit, playa!

[–] zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You should start getting it from CD-roms, that shit you can trust

[–] veroxii@aussie.zone 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I got my software from these free USB sticks I found in the parking lot.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Ah, you're one of my users

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

It is kind of cool, when you've actually written your own software and use that. But realistically, I'm still getting the compiler from the internet...

[–] strongarm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

Steady on Buck Rogers, what is this, 2025!?