Beware xargs security holes

[Ian Donaldson]

karl at ficc.ferranti.com (Karl Lehenbauer) writes:

>In article <1990Oct20.032718.1874 at cbnews.att.com> res at cbnews.att.com (Robert E. Stampfli) writes:
>>No user, malicious or not, can remove "every file on the system."
>>In fact, I contend it is impossible to remove the last instance of
>>an executable that contains the unlink() system call.

If the executable is built with non-shared text (ie unpure) then its
possible on most UNIXen.  On some UNIXen its even possible with shared
text binaries (eg: SVR4, SUNOS4.1)

Ian D