From: H. Peter Anvin N9ITP (hpa@merle.acns.nwu.edu)
Date: 04/04/93


From: hpa@merle.acns.nwu.edu (H. Peter Anvin N9ITP)
Subject: Re: question about setuid
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 1993 21:13:46 GMT

In article <1p9ns6$p31@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> of comp.os.linux,
  ig25@fg30.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes:
>
> According to the "Posix Programmer's Guide" by Don Lewine, the exec*()
> family of functions also looks in the environment variable PATH if
> the program to be executed cannot be found in the current directory.
> This is indeed implemented this way in Linux (or was, the last time
> I looked, around 0.99pl5); programs which use exec* are still vulnerable
> if they don't contain an explicit path (say execve("/bin/ls",...)

This is only true for the "p" subclass of exec (execvpe() for example).

        /hpa

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