Phoenix.pm: Perl Question :-)

Peter J Jones p at dancris.com
Wed Mar 10 22:50:04 CST 1999


Hello all,

    Last night I was about to lay down for the night when it just hit
me, ya know, like when God just reveals something to you (does that ever
happen to you?). Let me explain...

    I am in the middle of a Perl script that uses the allow and deny
principles that other Unix programs do, like cron. If there is an allow
file your username must be in it and if there is a deny file your
username must not be there. After I read and parse the config file I
"push" allow and deny usernames onto an array. Here is what hit me. What
would prevent a user from starting the script up with "perl -d script"
and then "push"ing their username onto the allow array and then typing
"c"? Now don't get me wrong, this is not a script that runs suid or is
really a security concern, what concerns me is how would I make
debugging a Perl script not an option to users so that if need be I
could write a truly secure Perl script that uses this allow and deny
principle?

    I wanted to write you guys and gals to find out what you would do...



Peter J Jones
Surprise, AZ




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