Bug in Stata dialogs

[Sergiy Radyakin]

A replicable bug in Stata's user-programmable dialogs subsystem has been found. It appears that it is possible to design a dialog that would have unexpected consequences :

• switching screen resolution (on attached monitors)[reproducible],
• preventing Stata from creating more dialogs [reproducible], seems like all dialogs, not just this one, and
• potentially crashing Stata [happened, but not sure how to make it reproducible].

I will not post an example here since it is a potentially exploitable vulnerability, but a minimal replication example is available for any user registered on this forum and marked as (StataCorp).

Observed in v11.2 (last published update) and v13.0 on MS Windows. Probably affects v12x as well.

Best, Sergiy Radyakin

[Alan Riley (StataCorp)]

Thank you for this and the other two reports regarding the dialog system. We would be grateful if you would send details on how to reproduce what you have described to Technical Services: http://www.stata.com/support/tech-support/contact/

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Dear Alan, I have sent the explanations to the tech-support. Best, Sergiy

[Sergiy Radyakin]

I have received a prompt and detailed response from a StataCorp's developer with the analysis of the examples that I've sent earlier for examination. The response contained explanations why the user shouldn't do what I was doing, and alternative solutions were suggested to accommodate my specific situation. I agree to the explanations and I am thankful for the suggestions.

That said, I must underline that Stata remains a superb product much surpassing by stability anything else I worked with, and I admit the problems that occasionally pop up occur under stress scenarios unlikely to be ever encountered by a typical user.

Best, Sergiy Radyakin

This also closes the threads:
http://www.statalist.org/forums/foru...-stata-dialogs
and
http://www.statalist.org/forums/foru...-stata-dialogs