[TUHS] The size of EMACS, and what hides in kLOCs

[michael@kjorling.se (Michael Kjörling)]

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On 26 Feb 2017 11:05 -0500, from cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo):
> On 26 February 2017 at 07:46, Michael Kjörling <michael at kjorling.se> wrote:
>> But remember; without Emacs, we might never have had _The Cuckoo's
>> Egg_. Imagine the terror of that loss.
> 
> Hhhmmm.... I must dig my copy out of storage because I do not remember
> emacs in there.

In the translated text that I have, the hacker relied primarily on
Emacs' mail feature to move the compromised atrun into place for
execution, in order to gain temporary root privileges. It is possible
that Stoll's original English text is more specific about which exact
feature was used; the translation does leave a little to be desired in
places where it's actually noticable even without having seen the
original, so I would not hold it beyond the translator (in 1991; gosh,
that's over a quarter of a century ago now) to not be completely
familiar with the finer points of Unix editors, or possibly even
wanting to simplify a little for a _readership_ that couldn't be
expected to.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
                 “People who think they know everything really annoy
                 those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)