Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sgi!yohn@tumult.sgi.com
From: yohn@tumult.sgi.com (Mike Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: IRIX 3.2: new directory blocks not zeroed?
Summary: Yes, this is a bug.
Message-ID: <51058@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 17 Feb 90 02:27:21 GMT
References: <90Feb15.191156est.6155@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Sender: yohn@tumult.sgi.com
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 17

In article <90Feb15.191156est.6155@neat.cs.toronto.edu>, ken@cs.toronto.edu (Ken Lalonde) writes:
> Unused space in newly created directories under IRIX 3.2 appears to
> contain data leftover from recently removed files.  When I run the
> following a few times on two of our 4D machines and one PI (all with
> /tmp on the root SCSI disk), the "cat -v foo" prints part of the passwd file.
> 
> 	% cd /tmp
> 	% cp /etc/passwd .		# any large text file will do
> 	% rm passwd
> 	% mkdir foo
> 	% cat -v foo
> 
> Bad news if you care about filesystem security.

Yes, bad news.  This has been fixed in the next-release software.

Mike Thompson