Re: 22.1.50; insert-file-contents is slow under tramp

[Stefan Monnier]

> The current approach(1) is to remove any temporary file immediately after
> it has been processes by Emacs (for example, insert-file-contents is
> finished).  This reduces the time nasty third party can see such a file.

If the file is readable, that's a major security concern.

> But I admit, this might not be sufficient wrt security threats.  Maybe
> one could change it such a way, that temporary files shall be owned by
> (user-login-name), and shall carry 0400 permissions.

How can you do that?  Let's say I access a file of user BAR from user FOO,
how would you go about doing it in such a way that user TOTO can never see
the content of the file?  BAR can't use `chown' (unless it's root).

> (1): That's the theory. In practice, there are still some zero-length
> temporary files left, for which I haven't debugged yet who is
> responsible to remove them. On my todo list.

Oh, I've sen those.  Yes, they need fixing as well, but it's minor: this is
not a security concern.


        Stefan