Dangerous to have ~/bin first in $PATH [was Re: Odd Path issue]
On Thu, Sep 26, 2002 at 01:55:40PM -0500, Kent West wrote:
> I'm using bash. "echo $PATH" reports:
>
> ~/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
>
Putting ~/bin first in your $PATH is a security risk. Consider that if
your user account got hacked into, somebody could place a modified top,
ls, less executable in your ~/bin directory. These executables could be
modified to perform tasks extraneous to what the legitimate executables
do, like mailing your personal files to the cracker.
-Andy
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