Security question

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 03:56:47PM -0800, Bob wrote:
> I am fairly new to Linux so I have been reading "A Practical Guide to Linux
> Commands, Editors and Shell Programming",  In the book they say that it is a
> security issue to place the working directory and/or the home directory at the
> front of the PATH.  Is this true?  If it is why does Ubuntu put the home
> directory first in the PATH?

$HOME/bin is fine (IMO criticisms of this do not make sense; it's within
your privilege domain).  The problem with putting the current directory
in $PATH is that you might quite reasonably cd to a directory you don't
control.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]