Beware xargs security holes
Boyd Roberts
boyd at necisa.ho.necisa.oz
Tue Oct 23 18:19:50 AEST 1990
In article <3940 at awdprime.UUCP> tif at doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain) writes:
>
>In any case, I've yet to see how "a malicious user [could]
>remove every file on the system."
>
Nor can I. Since when did xargs(1) use system(3)?
A malicious user may be able to embed newlines in filenames,
but that's not going to trash the _whole_ file-system.
If someone did change xargs(1) to use system(3) it's obviously been broken.
Using system(3) raises all sorts of revolting shell quoting problems -- not
to mention the security holes.
Boyd Roberts boyd at necisa.ho.necisa.oz.au
``When the going gets wierd, the weird turn pro...''
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