Here is a proof that I was right to believe. On Ubuntu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4fzInlyYQo

Regards,
Colin Pitrat

Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org>

To	General Discusson about Arch Linux <arch-general@archlinux.org>
cc
Subject	Re: [arch-general] makepkg running as root

Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org>

Please respond to : General Discusson about Arch Linux <arch-general@archlinux.org>

Sent by: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org
22/01/2008 11:06

Jan de Groot schrieb: >> Just think of what this would do as root in a PKGBUILD: >> >> build() { >> echo "You've been pwned!!!" >> rm -rf / >> } >> > > Be sure to check .install files too. They can also contain rm -rf / in post_install, those are executed by root when you install the package ;) You guys DO know that 'rm -rf /' is a harmless command that simply exits with an error message? You should use 'rm -rf /*' to kill someone's system. However, the problem with makepkg as root can be more subtle: If a broken PKGBUILD or Makefile installs files into / instead of ${startdir}/pkg, files will be missing in your package. However, you will not notice it, as the files are present in your system, and there won't be any error messages during the build process. I met a user on IRC once who claimed his PKGBUILD and the resulting package were fine, but the package was indeed empty, instead makepkg installed all files directly into his system - these files were now unknown to pacman. Worst case (apart from a malicious PKGBUILD) is that you overwrite critical system configuration files or libraries and render your system unusable. [attachment "signature.asc" deleted by Colin Pitrat/NCE/AMADEUS]