RE: Sould . (current dir) be in the PATH

["Dave Korn" <dave dot korn at artimi dot com>]

----Original Message----
>From: Tino.Engel@infineon.com
>Sent: 15 September 2005 18:35

> Hi,
> 
> '.' is not in the PATH due to security reasons on most business setups.
> I do not know if this is due to security against external threads or the
> user himself...


  Both, kind of.

  Imagine what would happen if

1)  The root user has '.' in $PATH
2)  The root user wants to see what files are in /tmp, so issues the
commands
   cd /tmp
   ls
3)  Ten minutes earlier, some other user ran
   echo "rm -rf / &" >/tmp/ls ; chmod a+x /tmp/ls

  Not having '.' in your $PATH means that when you run ls, you always get
the real ls.  (Assuming you haven't given world write perms to /bin).

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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