Wanted: thoughts about history mechanisms.

[Alex Martelli]

jmason at gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Jamie Mason) writes:
	...
:In article <1991Apr25.212431.1109 at am.sublink.org> alex at am.sublink.org (Alex Martelli) writes:
:>2. if, when the shell is about to emit a primary-prompt to terminal, it
:>   finds that a file named $HOME/..dothis exists, it opens, unlinks, 
:>   and then sources it; this is how the shell accesses the results of
:>   any history-like external command.
:
:	SECURITY HOLE!!  Someone else could easlily write this file, and
:the shell would execute their commands.  The shell should *at least*
:enforce that ~/.doit be a) owned by the effective uid of the shell and b)
:of mode 600 (or 700, since it *is* being executed, sort of).

'easily'?  ALL dot files in your home directory can be thought of as
"security holes" in this way - if you leave them writable (in general,
if you leave your home directory writable!), you're already asking
for big trouble, and, no, I don't think such mode-600ness is enforced
today for .profile, .exrc, .cshrc, .login, .rhosts, whatever $ENV
points at in ksh, and so on!
-- 
Alex Martelli - (home snailmail:) v. Barontini 27, 40138 Bologna, ITALIA
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