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A warning on a new destructive 'trojan horse'
Authored by: Eravau on May 12, '04 02:49:14PM
With rm -fr any files belonging to anyone would be deleted if they were in a directory to which you had read/write access. If you placed a directory inside of your home directory that had an owner other than yourself, and had a file inside of it that also was owned by someone other than yourself, then that directory and file would not be deleted by an rm -fr.

This would not, however, stop the destruction of everything else in your home directory. Every other file but that folder and its contents would still be deleted. rm doesn't just "delete only if everything listed can be deleted at once"...it "deletes everything it can that is listed".

I'm afraid you'll have to keep searching if you want to find some protection. Or better yet, take a previous poster's advice and only double-click on applications you know and trust. When using your computer, being an untrusting cynic can be a good thing sometimes.

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