COMMAND
chklogs
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
Systems running chklogs.
PROBLEM
There is a program called chklogs out there, written by D. Emilio
Grimaldo T. (root@panama.iaehv.nl). It's a pretty nice perl script
that uses a config file for archiving or taking other actions on
logfiles if theyr size exesses a predefined limit.
If You carefully examine it, You will find a lame tempfile bug in
it. When called with -m switch (usually from crontab) it will
mail the results to administrator. /tmp/chklogs.out is used to
compose a message. So the program will gladly overwrite any file
in the system. Credit for this discovery goes to Antti
Andreimann.
SOLUTION
Do not call chklogs with -m option or don't use it at all.