Trojan horse possible with news readers

[Larry Blair]

In article <6775 at rosevax.Rosemount.COM> merlyn at ernie.rosemount.com writes:
=Many news reading programs (rn, vnews, others?) allow you include the
=original text when following-up or replying-to articles.  The
=default editor is usually vi; some versions of vi will execute
=commands if it sees a line (near the top or bottom of a file)
=of the form <e><x><:><command><:>

The newsreader I use (rn) prepends a string to the included text.
I don't believe that those braindamaged versions of vi will execute:

> ex:!sh -c 'echo any command'>/tmp/NEWSBUG:
-- 
Larry Blair   ames!vsi1!lmb   lmb%vsi1.uucp at ames.arc.nasa.gov