Re: uudecode bug (?)

[Andrew D Jewell]

Perhaps there is a common option that many gnu utils should add, 
which is a little bit like the '-f' option in cp :

-P, --paranoid : always open output files with
                 "unlink(foo); open(foo, O_EXCL | O_CREATE)"

Added safety without breaking existing scripts.

Would this please everyone? There might need to be extra complexity 
to handle the execute bit in a useful way.

adj

>    The uudecode utility would create an output file without checking to
>    see if it was about to write to a symlink or a pipe. If a user uses
>    uudecode to extract data into open shared directories, such as /tmp,
>    this vulnerability could be used by a local attacker to overwrite
>    files or lead to privilege escalation. Fixed packages are available
>    now.