Oct 26th, 2009
Locate world-writable files and directories
Locate world-writable files and directories
To locate world-writable files and directories, you can use the following command
World-writable files are a security risk since it allows anyone to modify them. Additionally, world-writable directories allow anyone to add or delete files.
The “! -type l” parameter skips all symbolic links since symbolic links are always world-writable. However, this is not a problem as long as the target of the link is not world-writable, which is checked by the above find command.
World-Writable directories with sticky bit such as the /tmp directory do not allow anyone except the owner of a file to delete or modify it in this directory. The sticky bit makes files stick to the user who created it and it prevents other users from deleting and renaming the files. Therefore, depending on the purpose of the directory world-writable directories with sticky are usually not an issue. An example is the /tmp directory:
drwxrwxrwt 8 root root 4096 Oct 26 05:19 /tmp
From the find man pages:
File is of type c:
l symbolic link; this is never true if the -L option or the -follow option is in effect, unless the symbolic link is broken. If you want to search for symbolic links when -L is in effect, use -xtype.
