[web-devel] path to sendmail

[Jeremy Bowers]

On 02/09/2016 01:26 PM, David Turner wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> You could put the ability to change the setting on "the other side of 
> the airtight hatchway" as Raymond Chen might say:
>
It's worth providing a link to this since it's hard to find the original 
in Google:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060508-22/?p=31283/

There's really not much you can do about this except perhaps simply 
require that sendmail be in the path, and even that is subject to 
concerns about whether the path is set up securely. It isn't really your 
program's problem to make sure the system it's running on is set up 
securely; it is neither capable of correctly and safely determining the 
answer to that question, nor fixing it if it could.

Disclaimer: I actually work in computer security. This isn't an 
uninformed dismissal; this is an informed dismissal. :) In particular 
the last line of the previous paragraph is a core part of my point. If 
that wasn't true I might have a different opinion, but at the point 
where we're discussing a system that can't trust that sendmail is 
actually sendmail, you've already lost.

The only thing you can do is ensure that changing the path really and 
truly requires the proper authorization and there's no way to trick that 
system.