The problem that was reported as below for Mathematica7, is present also/still in (the "free trial" version of) Mathematica8. Cheers, Paul Szabo psz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/psz/ School of Mathematics and Statistics University of Sydney Australia --- I wrote on 14 May 2010: > "If you're doing anything technical, think Mathematica --..." > http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html > > Mathematica7 on Linux uses the /tmp/MathLink directory in insecure ways. > Mathematica creates or re-uses an existing /tmp/MathLink directory, and > overwrites files within and follows symlinks. This type of behaviour is > "known unsafe" on multi-user machines e.g. University login servers. > As a classic example of a symlink attack, if an "attacker" uses: > > mkdir /tmp/MathLink; ln -s /home/victim/.bashrc /tmp/MathLink/.gshmm > > then when the victim runs Mathematica his ~/.bashrc will be clobbered. > New files are created world-writable, allowing a complete compromise of > the user account by linking to ~/.bash_logout . (If root ever uses > Mathematica then the damage is greater.) > > Mathematica uses also /tmp/fonts$$.conf in insecure ways. > > Workaround: use command-line math instead of pretty interface. > > Notified support@xxxxxxxxxxx on 7 May 2010, was assigned [TS 16194].
