[techtalk] partitioning security (was lilo)

[Jenny Brown (was Gable)]

I can't give a real 'official' definition, but a hard link
makes a copy of the file, where as a soft link (using -s) just 
points to the original.  Hard links result in an actual increase
in disk space used.  I don't have much experience with them except
by accidentally forgetting the -s option to ln, though; so I can't
help much on their exact security effects.


On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 jenn at simegen.com wrote:
> I don't know the terms 'hard link' and 'soft link', but with a 
> symbolic link created with 'ln -s', the permissions of the 
> source of the link wind up being the permissions of the target.
> I don't know if/how partitions affect things.
> 
> However, since it seems hard links can affect security, perhaps
> someone would like to tell me: what are they? How/why do they
> create such holes?