[7846] in Athena Bugs
decmips 7.2R: delete/undelete file permissions.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George A. Madrid)
Wed Jul 31 05:26:37 1991
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 05:26:51 EDT
From: George A. Madrid <gamadrid@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
System name: podge
Type and version: KN01 7.2R (1 update(s) to same version)
Display type: PM-MONO
What were you trying to do?
Delete a file using the "delete" command.
What's wrong:
The file permissions are set incorrectly.
Ordinarily, when I remove a file, I consider it a rather safe bet that
no one will be able to read it anymore. (Without access to the physical disk,
anyway. :-}) Unfortunately, delete fails to give me this security.
------------------------------------------------------------
~>
podge: touch foobar
~>
podge: ls -l foobar
-rw-r--r-- 1 gamadrid 0 Jul 31 05:20 foobar
~>
podge: delete foobar
~>
podge: ls -l foobar .#foobar
foobar: No such file or directory
-rw-r--r-- 1 gamadrid 0 Jul 31 05:20 .#foobar
~>
------------------------------------------------------------
What should have happened:
As you can see, the "deleted" file is still world-readable. The file
permissions should be set to 400 in order to insure privacy.
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
Gee, I dunno. The man pages I guess. And there was also that article
about the guy who killed his wife and only _deleted_ the floppy disk where he
made his murder plans. No one told him that he should really _reformat_ the
disk to make it truly deleted. :-) Unfortunately, I don't remember a
reference, but it does make an amusing story.
