Bug 8327

Summary:	CWD is is in path if two consecutive colons appear in $PATH
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	David Balažic <david.balazic>
Component:	bash	Assignee:	Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.0	CC:	rhw
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-01-12 19:53:27 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description David Balažic 2000-01-10 12:42:57 UTC

bash-1.14.7-16 searches the CWD even if it is not in $PATH,
when there are two consecutive colons in the $PATH value or
the PATH strings ends with a colon. Examples :
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin"   is OK
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:."  includes CWD , is OK
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin::/usr/local/bin"   includes CWD , BUG !
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:"   includes CWD , BUG !

Comment 1 David Balažic 2000-01-10 17:17:59 UTC

A guy from the bash-bug mail list says that this is intended and I
discovered that tcsh behaves the same.
But on redhat 6.0 when the root starts an xterm ( or a kterm or gnome-term,
I don't remember ) in and KDE ( or GNOME ) session, he has the CWD implicitly
( due to this "bug" ) in his PATH, but not when logging on /dev/tty1 .
Having CWD in PATH is a security problem, especialy for root and
if the fact is "hidden" by this "bug".

Comment 2 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-01-12 19:53:59 UTC

It is not a bug, and you don't end up with a "broken" PATH (with two colons or a
colon at the end) unless you edit .bashrc, .bash_profile or the likes to change
your PATH.

Comment 3 Riley H Williams 2000-01-18 14:09:59 UTC

Not sure if it's related, but the version of RedHat 6.0 distributed on the cover
of Linux Answers magazine will install a system where every user (including
root) gets a PATH that BEGINS with a colon. Does that cause the same problem?

Memory says that the path given to root on such installations is as follows:

   PATH=:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X11/bin
        ^
        +--- That's the miscreant...

Comments?