Description of problem: "gets" should never be used, but it is listed in the manpage on this box along with various safe functions. If I may be melodramatic, this strikes me as akin to storing rat poison in a food cabinet, in the same style of packaging as the food, but with a post-it note on it saying "see warnings below". I think such "never use this" functions should be quarantined into their own manpages, rather than listing them alongside sane functions. At the same time, a more prominent "do not use" warning could be added higher up, so the NAME stanza of the new manpage could read: NAME gets - Unsafe function; do not use (see fgets instead). and the description could be updated to spell out the danger more clearly. There could be link to CWE-242 (aka "Use of Inherently Dangerous Function"): http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/242.html Ideally it could even list some examples of CVEs due to use of gets. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): man-pages-3.35-2.fc17.noarch How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. "man gets" Actual results: Unsafe "gets" listed alongside reasonable functions. Expected results: "gets" needs to be more clearly labelled as toxic. Additional info:
Patch sent upstream as: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.man/4626
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Patch applied to upstream git: http://git.kernel.org/cgit/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=beef2770927a56dc3c16a36bed938574df285637 (followed by some tweaks), so should be in next upstream release. Marking this as "CLOSED UPSTREAM"