Relying on the tainted state of anything is less secure than being certain to clean it properly. Taint mode is a safety net, and now there's an undocumented hole in the net.

This might not be a common issue, but someone somewhere might get bit by it. It only takes one vocal person who gets bit by it to further the "Perl is insecure" meme, no matter that it's the safety net he was counting on that failed.

More philosophically, if the docs and tutorials are going to tout Taint mode as a general tool for improving security, then the security docs covering that should be very accurate and precise. That someone gets burned by following directions about the enhanced security layer offered by a broadly recommended module is just a bad way for an application's security to fail.

You might take issue with Taint.pm being widely suggested as a security improvement, but I think it would be hard to argue that isn't the case. So long as it is promoted, it should provide at least what the docs specifically say it does.

In reply to Re^6: pack() untaints data : bug or undocumented Perl 5.10 feature? by mr_mischief
in thread pack() untaints data : bug or undocumented Perl 5.10 feature? by mr_mischief

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