/var/mail question

[Bill Moran]

quadrant wrote:
> I was temporarilly using pine to retrieve my email, and upon exiting the
> program, pine notified me that the /var/mail directory was
> vulnerable, and advised a chmod 1777 of such. The default is 775.
> What are the implications of this, and won't 1777 make the folder more
> vulnerable? My understanding was that if the SUID bit is turned
> on for either U, G or O, that security is more at risk. Please
> let me know what I should do...

Read the man page for chmod.

The suid and sgid bits mean something different on directories than on
files.  When set, they force all files created in that directory to be
owned by the owner of the directory.  Again ... see the man page for more
detail, as well as (I believe) a description of how this helps security.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com