$HOME/.local/bin in $PATH

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net> said:
> [root at srv-rhsoft:~]$ mkdir test
> i could rm -rf ~/ here
> 
> [root at srv-rhsoft:~]$ cat /usr/local/bin/mkdir
> #!/bin/bash
> echo "i could rm -rf ~/ here"

If I can write to files you own, it doesn't matter if there's a
directory in the PATH or not.  I can write this to your .bash_profile:

   /bin/mkdir $HOME/.bin 2> /dev/null
   echo 'echo "i could rm -rf ~/ here"' > $HOME/.bin/mkdir
   chmod +x $HOME/.bin/mkdir
   PATH=$HOME/.bin:$PATH

Sure, it might not take effect immediately, but that's probably not the
point (I can't depend on you running "mkdir" in a shell at any
particular point in time anyway).  You wouldn't gain anything
security-wise by excluding a user-writable directory in PATH.

In fact, having a "known" ~/.local/bin could allow for a more
restrictive SELinux policy on that directory that doesn't let arbitrary
programs running as the user write there (don't know if that is the case
though).

-- 
Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>