Depending on how it's modified to fix that bug, I think it could introduce a security issue as it: * doesn't seem like an upstream script designed to run as root * seems racy (especially after checking if something is a symlink) * handles user content as root
AFAICT being at runlevel S at least stops racy issues. I wasn't actually able to exploit anything myself, but if say there is an exploit in awk, this could allow the attacker to get root at the next reboot.
