GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 396479
Preview mode: files are not unlink'ed
Last modified: 2007-01-14 15:43:50 UTC
When using evince as preview application for Gtk+-2.10, the input file will be in the temp folder. When evince is closed, this file is not erased. This is a *critical* security risk. As an example, consider an email client (MUA) which decrypts a PGP encrypted message. It now uses evince to preview the message printout. When the MUA is terminated, the user will of course assume that none of h(is|er) confidential data is leaked, but there is still a pretty formatted file in the temp folder, readable for root. Therefore, in preview mode, evince *must* at least erase the file from the temp folder. It might be a good idea to safely erase the contents (as e.g. shred(1) does, or using a more secure algorithm). This is effectual on non-journaled file systems only, though.
Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 365282 ***