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Date:      06 Sep 2001 22:58:36 +0200
From:      Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>
To:        Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
Cc:        Piet Delport <siberiyan@mweb.co.za>, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>, Giorgos Keramidas <charon@labs.gr>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Scripts and setuid
Message-ID:  <xzpsne0dojn.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
In-Reply-To: <15255.33577.367972.284194@guru.mired.org>
References:  <999708032.3b96558062cd2@webmail.neomedia.it> <20010905204055.A268@athalon> <20010905215258.A4304@hades.hell.gr> <20010906005600.A4157@athalon> <20010905161408.A80303@xor.obsecurity.org> <20010906131141.B4157@athalon> <15255.33577.367972.284194@guru.mired.org>

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Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> writes:
> First, perl isn't an exception. It's a lot safer than shell scripting
> because it can do real work without executing external code. It also
> provides "taint checking" which prevents you from accidently executing
> strings that came from the user.

Taint checks also prevent you from opening or deleting files whose
names were constructed from strings taken from the environment,
command line, or user input, or read from a file.  They also prevent
you from calling exec() or system() with an insecure $PATH (for some
definition of "insecure").  There are of course mechanisms to
circumvent these checks for strings that the programmer is certain are
safe (regexp match variables don't inherit taint from the string the
regexp was matched against).

One other advantage of Perl is that it isn't vulnerable to IFS
tickling.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@ofug.org

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