Subject: privacy hole in pine

From: [email-masked] (Tilmann Boess)
Date: 28 Nov 1996 07:56:41 GMT

The versions 3.94 (tested on IBM AIX 3.2) and 3.95 (tested on Linux 2.0)
(I don't know about earlier versions.) of pine include a privacy hole:

If you write a new message, pine creates a backup file (named
`#pico<pine-PID>#') of the mail text in your home directory.  The access
mode of this file is determined by your standard umask.  For most users
this is set to `022', thus setting the access mode for the backup file to
644, so that the text you just write is world-readable.  Also the files
`~/.pinerc' and `.addressbook' are created using the default umask.  IMHO
these files should be readable by no one except its owner.  Ok, you can
choose a more private location for `.addressbook' in `~/.pinerc', but that
is not possible for `~/.pinerc'.  As a workaround, I created the following
simple shell script and aliased pine to pine-secure:

--------------------------------
#!/usr/local/bin/tcsh
# /usr/local/bin/pine-secure
set default_umask=`umask`
umask 077
/usr/local/bin/pine $*
umask $default_umask
unset default_umask
--------------------------------

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   Tilmann Boess               Internet:
   Experimentelle Physik 1       [email-masked]
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