Security: Mutt and mailcap rules

Cameron Simpson cs at cskk.id.au
Mon Jun 24 00:13:43 UTC 2019


On 23Jun2019 12:36, vincent lefevre <vincent at vinc17.org> wrote:
>On 2019-06-23 14:44:36 +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
>> Were it a simple filename it would all be easy. Maybe a chdir(tmpdir)
>> before running the shell command with a simple filename?
>
>I'm not sure whether this is a good idea. The temporary directory
>may be (and often is) world-writable, and on multi-user machines,
>this increases the risk of vulnerability. For instance, some
>programs may consider configuration files in the current working
>directory, and/or may write/re-read files there.

Ugh. Yes. Have we got some real world examples in mind? VCS programmes 
are the glaring ones to my mind.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>


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