Linux Running in a PDF • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#41

Post by speerer » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

taurknaut wrote: post #24

kleiba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says in the document itself that it only works in Chromium-based browsers.

What kind of pdf feature works in chrome but not evince?

Insane ones, like hosting an OS.

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#42

Post by FergusArgyll » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

yapyap wrote: post #17

nunobrito wrote: post #6

Does it run doom? ;-)

Better question, does it run DOOM Emacs

vi works!

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#43

Post by inetknght » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:33 AM UTC

taurknaut wrote: post #24

kleiba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says in the document itself that it only works in Chromium-based browsers.

What kind of pdf feature works in chrome but not evince?

The kinds of features that benefit Google and not necessarily the general public.

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#44

Post by rolandog » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:34 AM UTC

Does anyone know if running PDFs through the following filter (as in [0]) prevent malicious actors?

    gs \
        -dNOPAUSE \
        -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
        -sOUTPUTFILE=clean.pdf \
        -dBATCH \
        dirty.pdf

[0]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/481609/29430

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#45

Post by lima » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:40 AM UTC

rolandog wrote: post #44

Does anyone know if running PDFs through the following filter (as in [0]) prevent malicious actors? gs \ -dNOPAUSE \ -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \ -sOUTPUTFILE=clean.pdf \ -dBATCH \ dirty.pdf [0]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/481609/29430

It can make things worse: Ghostscript is not particularly safe to run on untrusted/potentially malicious input. It has a giant attack surface and no proper mitigations, unlike the PDF reader in your browser.

At a minimum, you'd have to sandbox it using something like gVisor.

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#46

Post by neilv » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:43 AM UTC

    1. Linux Running in a PDF (doompdf.dev)
    114 points by theden 4 hours ago | flag | hide | 37 comments

    2. Ingesting PDFs and why Gemini 2.0 changes everything (sergey.fyi)
    978 points by serjester 17 hours ago | flag | hide | 323 comments

As people start bolting various kinds of PDF parsers and evaluators to LLMs, there's got to be some interesting hack potential.

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#47

Post by frabert » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:44 AM UTC

Finally! I've been making the joke "put Linux.js in a PDF so I can run Linux, inside a PDF, inside a browser, inside Linux, inside a PDF, inside a browser, inside Linux" for far too long...

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#48

Post by afandian » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:49 AM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #21

afandian wrote: post #19

Doesn't work in Evince or Firefox FWIW.

It says in the document itself that it only works in Chromium-based browsers.

It does, but the headline doesn't. I don't know if it's a nickpick too far, but it should be "X in a PDF in Chromium", as the hack seems as much about Chromium as it is about PDFs.

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#49

Post by aa-jv » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:49 AM UTC

surrTurr wrote: post #20

Who the hell keeps making those? First I saw Tetris, now a whole OS. Awesome!

The Reverend Pastor Manul Laphroaig at Alchemist Owl is responsible for a lot of this madness:

https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/

I confess to having become a fan long, long ago ..

Re: Linux Running in a PDF

#50

Post by patapong » Thu, Feb 06, 2025, 11:54 AM UTC

pletnes wrote: post #3

I would really appreciate if someone could put a decent PDF reader, like Sumatra, into a PDF so I could have a portable and good PDF reader on locked down computers.

PDF, the true universal app platform. Please don't tell Microsoft.