Can other users delete / replace this file if the directory and file have the following permissions

/test drwxrwxrwx

/test/file _rw_r__r__

I guess what I really want to know is what the security riskis of having teh directory completely open when the access to a particular file is restricted.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Yes - see this post about directory permissions.

Thanks,
this really helps!

Are there any known security restrictions that would prevent anyone from deleting the etc/passwd file and replacing it with one where the root password would be known if the permissions on the /etc directory were 777 or drwxrwxrwx ?
Given your response to the previous question I would suspect that one could get away with this if the permissions were not set correctly.

I want to lock down the permissions on the etc directory but cannot because there are scripts that run and require etc to have these permissions. I need to convince my manager that we need to be given time and budget to change this around, but I don't want to try and delete the passwd file just to prove my point to him.

What OS and version are you using?

On Solaris, /etc should be 755 - allowing users to run scripts but not write or delete in the directory.