in reply to Re^2: exec command taking ages
in thread exec command taking ages

Also, the $identifier variable holds the directory that the user selected from a list on an intial webpage and the variable is passed to another .cgi script before finally being passed to this .cgi script so I am not sure how taint would help.

Thats what you hope $identifier holds. The program does absolutely no checking to see what is in $identifier, and then merrily passes $identifier to the shell for execution, classic security hole.

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