Invisible Malicious Unicode Risks
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Unicode as a Security Risk
There are invisible characters that might be copied that can do malicious actions. This is a security risk for:
- A) For users: Commands copied and pasted into a terminal emulator.
- B) For developers: Introduction of invisible vulnerabilities or backdoors through source code contributions.
These adversarial encodings produce no visual artifacts probably in most editors and terminals.
Forum discussion:
https://forums.whonix.org/t/detecting-malicious-unicode-in-source-code-and-pull-requests/13754
Checking Files for Unicode
NOTE: Not all unicode in files is necessarily malicious. Only some unicode characters in some files is suspicious or potentially malicious.
Syntax for files:
grep-find-unicode-wrapper /path/to/filename
Example for files:
grep-find-unicode-wrapper ~/.bashrc
Syntax for folders:
grep-find-unicode-wrapper -r /path/to/folder
Example for folders:
Note: The following example check the user's home folder. Replace ~/ with a different folder if another folder should be checked.
grep-find-unicode-wrapper -r ~/
Expected output:
- A) If no unicode has been found: None.
- B) If unicode has been found: All lines that include unicode.
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