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Full Discussion: chmod 777 security risks?
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers chmod 777 security risks? Post 302097253 by Gary777 on Wednesday 22nd of November 2006 08:45:35 PM
Old 11-22-2006
chmod 777 security risks?

Hello all,

I did a considerable search of the forum and didn't find an answer so I'll ask it here. For clarity's sake I'll state that I know just enough about Unix to be Dangerous (I'm an old Clipper, VO, ASM programmer from the 80's.)

I would like to install PHP driven CMS program to my webserver (iPowerWeb hosted) called SnippetMaster (http://www.snippetmaster.com/) to allow my business partner the ability to modify webpages without messing up the core file templates (I use includes for dynamic content) but one of the requirements of SnippetMaster is that I must chmod 666 or 777 ALL of the files in ../public_html directory that I want my partner to be able to modify. It doesn't require that I chmod 777 the directory it self.

They (http://www.snippetmaster.com/) openly claim and challenge anyone to prove them wrong that chmod'ing files with 777 in the public html directory is safe as long as my server is secure, they claim that only a person who can "log on" to my server and who has access to my root directory can overwrite an existing .shtml or .html file (such as index.shtml) or overwrite an existing PHP script with a potentially hazardous one and execute it. I don't believe this, I have a very strong feeling that this is patently wrong but after Googling for the last 2 hours I have found answers that both support and discourage this practice so I thought I'd ask the experts.

1) Is chmod'ing "files" in ../public_html to 777 or 666 a safe practice?

2) Can files be over written by people surfing the web (exmp: and simply using composer to edit then save the file back to the server?)

Please explain how this works if it is in fact a safe practice...

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Gary
 

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LWP-DOWNLOAD(1) 					User Contributed Perl Documentation					   LWP-DOWNLOAD(1)

NAME
lwp-download - Fetch large files from the web SYNOPSIS
lwp-download [-a] [-s] <url> [<local path>] DESCRIPTION
The lwp-download program will save the file at url to a local file. If local path is not specified, then the current directory is assumed. If local path is a directory, then the last segment of the path of the url is appended to form a local filename. If the url path ends with slash the name "index" is used. With the -s option pick up the last segment of the filename from server provided sources like the Content- Disposition header or any redirect URLs. A file extension to match the server reported Content-Type might also be appended. If a file with the produced filename already exists, then lwp-download will prompt before it overwrites and will fail if its standard input is not a terminal. This form of invocation will also fail is no acceptable filename can be derived from the sources mentioned above. If local path is not a directory, then it is simply used as the path to save into. If the file already exists it's overwritten. The lwp-download program is implemented using the libwww-perl library. It is better suited to down load big files than the lwp-request program because it does not store the file in memory. Another benefit is that it will keep you updated about its progress and that you don't have much options to worry about. Use the "-a" option to save the file in text (ascii) mode. Might make a difference on dosish systems. EXAMPLE
Fetch the newest and greatest perl version: $ lwp-download http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz Saving to 'latest.tar.gz'... 11.4 MB received in 8 seconds (1.43 MB/sec) AUTHOR
Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no> perl v5.16.2 2012-01-13 LWP-DOWNLOAD(1)
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