RE: The evaluate function

> Apart from all the issues mentioned by Mr.Kay, an eval()
> function makes it rather easy to open security holes in
> a style sheet.
> For example, once you figured out you can put a XPath into
> the nice "Enter your query here" field which is passed
> directly to an eval() function, what will stop you from
> entering
>  document("file:///C/Documents and
> Settings/Administrator/preferences.xml")?
>  :-)
> Or, if extension functions may be called indiscriminately:
>  mswin:delete("C:\*.*","recursive")
>

I don't think you should rely on static analysis to stop stylesheets
performing mischief.

The latest Saxon releases have a switch allowing extension functions to be
disabled, so you can run untrusted stylesheets safely in a servlet
environment. It's then up to the web server to control what URLs are
accessible.

Mike Kay


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