Dot (.) In PATH
Example of a vulnerable PATH. Note the dot in the front:
If a user named admin
has the above PATH, then if you put a malicious executable named ls
in a folder the admin
user frequently visits, then if they type ls
into their terminal while they are in that folder, they’ll execute your program.
If the dot is at the end of the PATH, then exploitation is slightly more difficult, since the ls
executable in /usr/bin/ls
will be found before ./ls
is found, and /usr/bin/ls
will be executed instead of your malicious ./ls
. In that case, you can add a ./sl
executable and hope that the admin
user makes a typo.
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