PATH Rules

PTH001: World-writable directory in PATH

Severity: high

A world-writable directory in your PATH allows any user on the system to place malicious executables that could be run instead of legitimate commands. This is a common privilege escalation and code injection vector.

What it checks:

• Each directory listed in the $PATH environment variable
• Whether any directory has world-writable permissions

Remediation:

# Remove world-writable permission from the directory
chmod o-w /path/to/directory

# Or remove the directory from PATH
export PATH=$(echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n' | grep -v '/unsafe/dir' | tr '\n' ':')

PTH002: Relative path entry in PATH

Severity: warn

Relative paths (e.g., . or bin) in PATH mean that command resolution depends on the current working directory. An attacker who can write files to a directory you visit could execute arbitrary code.

What it checks:

• Each entry in the $PATH environment variable
• Whether any entry is a relative path (does not start with /)

Remediation:

# Convert relative paths to absolute paths or remove them
# Edit your shell profile (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc) and ensure all PATH entries are absolute
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"