Strange entry in .bash_history!

Do I need to be concerned?

[andreasfriedrich]

Recently I installed Debian Woody on my testing server. Now I found these entries in the .bash_history files for both root and my normal user account. I never entered those commands. And I would just cd directly to / instead of using this strange cd "`echo -e '\057'`" construct. What is connected to the &6 fd?

PROMPT_COMMAND='pwd>&6;kill -STOP $$' 
 cd "`echo -e '\057\150\157\155\145'`" 
 cd "`echo -e '\057'`" 
 cd "`echo -e '\057\150\157\155\145\057\141\146'`" 
 cd "`echo -e '\057'`"

Do I need to be concerned about this? Any advise or information would be appreciated.

TIA Andreas

[bartek]

I don't think this is an intrusion. I think mc (Midnight Commander) does this, don't quite remember why... Has something to do with reading your password, checking where your directory is and drawing that cute GUI window.

[littleman]

No insight but:
\057\150\157\155\145\057\141\146 == /home/af

[andreasfriedrich]

Thanks bartek and littleman.

The mc idea sounds reasonable since I have been using it and found the PROMPT_COMMAND string within the mc binary. I was just worried since mc running on Redhat 7.0 never caused these lines to appear in the history file and since the system had been without a firewall for some time (still working on figuring out the subtle differences between Debian and Redhat;)).

Andreas

[andreasfriedrich]

It is indeed mc´s way of chnging the dirs in mc:

[mail.gnome.org...]

Andreas

[andreasfriedrich]

The solution to prevent these entries in the history file (they are really annoying) is to set the HISTIGNORE environment variable to "[ ]*" which is obviously done by Redhat as a default but not by Debian Woody.

Andreas