Hacking with LaTeX
&gt; That&#x27;s because Latex is turing complete and that means...<p>The article is of course interesting, but it&#x27;s really annoying to read claims that Turing completeness has anything to do with security.  The danger comes from interaction with the external environment, not whether or not the language is Turing complete.  If HTML had a &quot;\write&quot; equivalent, it would be just as dangerous.  Conversely, the script,<p><pre><code>    \newwrite\outfile
    \openout\outfile=cmd.tex
    \write\outfile{\imm\diate\wwrite\args}
    \write\outfile{\inp\iput\cmd}
    \closeout\outfile
</code></pre>
Doesn&#x27;t require a loop or anything indicating a Turing complete language.  That said the Turing complete aspects of Latex can be very useful, for e.g. using it to calculate results during compilation.  But it&#x27;s the \write etc that make it dangerous, not \loop.