In Unix, "others" class refers to all users except the owner of the file and the members of the group assigned to this file.

Granting permissions to this group can lead to unauthorized access to files.

Ask Yourself Whether

There is a risk if you answered yes to any of those questions.

Recommended Secure Coding Practices

The most restrictive possible permissions should be assigned to files and directories.

Sensitive Code Example

    public void setPermissions(String filePath) {
        Set<PosixFilePermission> perms = new HashSet<PosixFilePermission>();
        // user permission
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_READ);
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_WRITE);
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_EXECUTE);
        // group permissions
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_READ);
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_EXECUTE);
        // others permissions
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OTHERS_READ); // Sensitive
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OTHERS_WRITE); // Sensitive
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OTHERS_EXECUTE); // Sensitive

        Files.setPosixFilePermissions(Paths.get(filePath), perms);
    }
    public void setPermissionsUsingRuntimeExec(String filePath) {
        Runtime.getRuntime().exec("chmod 777 file.json"); // Sensitive
    }
    public void setOthersPermissionsHardCoded(String filePath ) {
        Files.setPosixFilePermissions(Paths.get(filePath), PosixFilePermissions.fromString("rwxrwxrwx")); // Sensitive
    }

Compliant Solution

On operating systems that implement POSIX standard. This will throw a UnsupportedOperationException on Windows.

    public void setPermissionsSafe(String filePath) throws IOException {
        Set<PosixFilePermission> perms = new HashSet<PosixFilePermission>();
        // user permission
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_READ);
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_WRITE);
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.OWNER_EXECUTE);
        // group permissions
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_READ);
        perms.add(PosixFilePermission.GROUP_EXECUTE);
        // others permissions removed
        perms.remove(PosixFilePermission.OTHERS_READ); // Compliant
        perms.remove(PosixFilePermission.OTHERS_WRITE); // Compliant
        perms.remove(PosixFilePermission.OTHERS_EXECUTE); // Compliant

        Files.setPosixFilePermissions(Paths.get(filePath), perms);
    }

See