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Article #1610

Re: crontab for ordinary users

#1610
From: Michael Fuller
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 1990 23:50
34 lines
2111 bytes
jeff@onion.pdx.com (Jeff Beadles) writes:
>I believe that you're doing your best to make your system vulnerable to a
>trojan horse attack with a brain-damaged path like this.  

>  *** DOT SHOULD NEVER BE FIRST IN YOUR PATH. ***

>There are security papers galore that try to beat this into people, but they
>just don't listen.  It IS a very good idea though.

>If you don't know why dot is bad in front of your path,  send me email telling
>me why you need to know. :-)

Please! Just come out and say it. Having implied that there is a security hole,
you then don't say what it is. Ordinary users such as myself :-)
don't have time or even know quite where to look for the "security papers 
galore", but those who _are_ interested in exploiting such
weaknesses will eagerly go off to play. If I knew why it was a bad idea,
I would be *much* less likely to do such a thing. The result now is that
I won't know, and the baddies will :-(. If you must mention a problem,
do so in a way which doesn't disadvantage the very people you are trying
to protect.

>	-Jeff
Michael

p.s.	Security papers would do a much better job of trying to beat things
into people if they were widely diestributed and publicised. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Fuller,                   ACSNET: msf@wren.cs.rmit.OZ
Key Center for Knowl. Based Sys., INTERNET: msf@wren.cs.rmit.OZ.AU
RMIT Dept. of Comp. Sci.,         JANET: msf%au.oz.wren@uk.ac.ukc
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!goanna!wren!msf
From: msf@wren.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Michael Fuller)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: crontab for ordinary users
Message-ID: <4073@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 24 Oct 90 23:50:39 GMT
References: <FPB.90Oct21120952@ittc.ittc.wec.com> <1990Oct23.065611.17458@onion.pdx.com>
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