Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 149100
Strange hex codes "\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06" being sent
Last modified: 2013-04-30 19:33:13 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 Description of problem: The script below works under telnet-0.17-25 but fails intermittently under telnet-0.17-30. When I look at the access_log I can see what appears to be "\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06" without the quotes inserted randomly in request. I've included access_log examples below. Please note, the script is only two lines long. #!/bin/sh { echo "GET / HTTP/1.1" ; echo "Host: www.qicboy.com" ; echo "User-Agent: sh" ; echo ; sleep 3 ; } | /usr/bin/telnet www.qicboy.com 80 2>/dev/null | tr -d '\15\32' | { while [ "`read r; echo $r`" != "" ]; do true ; done ; echo ; cat ; } exit 208.228.216.118 - - [17/Feb/2005:14:33:25 -0800] "GE\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06 /qicboy/index.html HTTP/1.1" 502 432 "-" "sh" 208.228.218.209 - - [17/Feb/2005:14:33:25 -0800] "GE\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06 / H\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06P/1.1" 502 432 "-" "sh" Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): telnet-0.17-30 How reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Copy and save the two line bash script, give script execute permission, change www.qicboy.com to a httpd you can view the access_log of. 2. Tail the httpd access_log (tail -f access_log) and wait for the appearance of strange hex characters in the request. 3. From another terminal, run the script a couple of times. Actual Results: The hex codes "\xff\xf4\xff\xfd\x06" appear in the GET request. Expected Results: These hex codes should not appear in the request at all. Additional info: This was not a problem in telnet-0.17-25.
could this be UTF-8 ?? Try to start the shell script with: export LANG=C
I added the export LANG=C but it didn't fix the problem.
does it help to call telnet with the "-8" option? you may also want HTTP/1.0
but I can see no change between -25 and -30, which could produce this behaviour
I added the -8 option and changed the header from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/1.0. I am still seeing the problem. Just to be clear, the telnet client changed, the httpd did not, so I'd be surprised if the HTTP header had anything to do with the problem. I use the 1.1 protocol because of name based hosting. The problem might not actually be because of a change in the telnet code. It might have been a change in an underlying library that has caused the telnet problem to become more prevalent. Does anyone have any idea what these hex codes mean anyway?
I cannot reproduce the problem... [02/Mar/2005:17:50:55 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 31997 "-" "sh" [02/Mar/2005:17:51:55 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 32029 "-" "sh" [02/Mar/2005:17:51:59 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 32029 "-" "sh" [02/Mar/2005:18:17:33 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 16227 "-" "sh" [02/Mar/2005:18:17:54 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 31628 "-" "sh" [02/Mar/2005:18:17:58 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 31628 "-" "sh" [02/Mar/2005:18:19:41 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 31589 "-" "sh" The hexcodes look like some "escape" chars... but telnet would not escape a "T". If the protocol used for telnet was not tcp, I would say, you have network problems. Try to insert a "tee output.txt" in the pipe before telnet. Just to be sure you are not generating the hexcodes with the commands before. Does it work again, if you install the old telnet rpm?
Also, I may suggest to use "nc" for that :) Not that I don't want to know what is going on here, but "nc" is what you want in this case, not a telnet client, which might want to negotiate the connection using the telnet protocol :)
with nc, you don't need the "sleep 3" e.g.
I copied the /usr/bin/telnet from the httpd machine [Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike)] to /tmp/telnet on the telnet machine [Fedora Core release 3 (Heidelberg)]. When I use /tmp/telnet I do not see the problem. If I switch back to /usr/bin/telnet the hex codes show up again. The script is used on various operating systems: ibm_aix, hp_ux, sco_unix, dec_unix, rh_linux under various versions of the operating system. Fedora is the only one that seems to have this problem. I suppose I could do and if/then to use nc on Fedora as a kludge. Kind of a shame really. I'm not sure why you're not seeing the hex codes on your system. I see it coming from at least two machines in-house running the telnet script. I've already mentioned one, the other is running RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant)] Admittedly my httpd system is pretty low budget, it's one of those fry's bare bones systems from a few years back (1 GHz processor, 133MHz bus, 512M memory). while [ 1 ] ; do previous_script done
oh, btw, be sure to use /usr/bin/telnet and not /usr/kerberos/bin/telnet $ which telnet
There were no response from reporter since 2005. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.9 update will contain only security and performance related fixes thus I'm closing this ticket.