TZ Rationalization Requested

Mark Horton mark at cbosgd.UUCP
Sat Mar 10 17:02:25 AEST 1984


An interesting side effect of the environment style method of determining
the time zone is that, since any user can set his environment, it's
easy to forge your time zone.  What good does that do, you ask?  Well,
if your system has restrictions on what time of day certain programs
(e.g. games) can be run, claiming to be in a funny time zone can
get around them.  (Although just chmodding /usr/games from crontab
isn't subject to this.)  If UUCP is only allowed to dial another
system at certain times (presumably when the rates are lower),
you can trick it into calling anyway.  Finally, since you get to make
up the name as well as offset of the time zone, you can use the real
name and a fake offset, in order to, say, backdate mail you send.



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