crontab for ordinary users

[Michael Fuller]

jeff at 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 at wren.cs.rmit.OZ
Key Center for Knowl. Based Sys., INTERNET: msf at wren.cs.rmit.OZ.AU
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