On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Thomas Sourmail wrote:

> > run, this is for security purposes because you should
> > not put . in your path or else someone could bust
> > into your unix system.
>
> How ?
>
If the current directory is in the PATH variable before the standard
paths, someone could place a trojaned version of a program into a world
writable directory. Whenever someone ran (or think they ran) a system
utility from that directory, they would instead be running the fake.

E.g.
  echo $PATH

  You should see something like /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin

  Set root's PATH to include the current directory first:
  PATH=.:$PATH

  cd to /tmp as a normal use

  create a script that does something, say touch a file in a priveleged
  directory and call the script ls:

  #!/bin/bash
  touch /path/to/priveleged/directory/delete_me
  ls $*


  Now, if root cds to /tmp and does an 'ls', the script will run
  instead.


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