Re: creating backups in temporary directories

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>     Worse yet: creating backup files in /tmp would be a security hole:
>>     some other user seeing you're currently editing /tmp/foo could create
>>     a symlink /tmp/foo~ to some interesting place and then when you save your
>>     file the backup could be placed at that interesting place chosen by
>>     the attacker.
>
>> Is that equally true for any directory that others can write?
>
> Yes.

Well, there is sort of a difference: /tmp and similar are
world-writable because of technical reasons.  Other directories might
be accessible to more than one person (usually group-accessible)
creating an explicit location for cooperation.  So malicious attacks
are not as much anticipated there, also because they are not generally
available (/tmp and /var/tmp are on pretty much every system).

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum