From: Tim Greer <tim@...>
Date: 2009-01-07T14:30:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Anyone knows this warning?

Zhao Yi wrote:

> When my ruby runs an external program, it will get this warning:
>  warning: Insecure world writable dir SOMEDIR
> 
> I have checked the SOMEDIR and its permission mode is 777. Does anyone
> know this warning? How can I avoid this?
> 
> thanks

World read, write and execute is a bad thing if you're on a shared
server with other users.  Any good system will error and prevent it
from running, instead of blindling running it.  Else you risk issues
where another user on the system can write to your files/directories,
destroy, modify or delete your valuable data, as well as open
exploitable potentials.  If this is your own server and you don't share
it with any other users (or other users you can't trust), then you can
remove that check if you wish.  Still, even when running with a lower
privileged user instead of your own for better protection (if you run
insecure scripts or you aren't able to ensure they are secure), it
still shouldn't need world write/execute.
-- 
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