Re^4: running an executable from a cgi script

[swkronenfeld]

So you are allowing a user to upload a text file and your executable is doing some sort of processing on that file. Then yes, you have a potential security problem.

If you're greping the text file for some keywords and printing them back...not such a big deal. If you're letting the user upload a shell script and executing it for them...red alert! So we need to know what your executable is doing with the text.

[Angharad]

ok. thanks for your help so far. The executable is simply taking the file and extracting some information from it and then its doing some calculations with the information it has been given.
So .. the upload script first allows the user to upload the file (the user can only upload a text file and only up to a certain size .. that has already been taken care of). Then the upload script sends the name and location of the file to the second script which then runs the external program