[codelobe]

[insert confused trollface]

> ffmpeg There is certainly a few hundered exploitable vectors in that program alone... to say nothing of the rest.

When in doubt, spin up a VM to run the random untrusted thing -- And then go read its mailing list/issue tracker for known VM escaping exploits. I have a machine setup to test malware, so I just hit my "airgap" switch to isolate the system from my network once the questionable code is in place and ready to run (potentially amok). Study-up about ARP-poison attacks, and remember ARP does not transit to upstream routers/switches (Y "combinate" your network for fun and profit).

Before you assume non malicious simple text output, consider "ANSI" escape code complexity as an intrusion vector for whatever terminal you run. I've got "0-days" for this going back to MSDOS: ANSI Bomb => arbitrary CMD entry. You don't have to take my word for it, your terminal of choice is most certainly vulnerable to some ANSI/escape code related exploit, look it up.

[hk__2]

Fine but we’re not talking about piping random stuff from the Internet here; we’re just using curl as a convenience not to use an intermediary file.

[rezonant]

This is why I spin up a VM whenever I want to look at an image. The risk is too great. Even text files, after all we never know if there's a zero day in the UTF-8 decoder. Better safe than sorry.

Wait a minute I just realized there could be a zero day in the VM hypervisor too. I guess I'll just have to buy a fresh Raspberry Pi for each file I want to open.

/s