Hey I'll spare the long winded explanation of this to this point...

Looks like I may need to add public execute permissions to the httpdocs folder on my server for a domain... I'm just curious what sorts of dangers/vulnerabilities this could cause. Is it a big deal?

Thanks!

Well, it's a typical setting. If noone knows the exact name of files in that directory, then noone can reach them. But for dynamic sites accessing index.(EXT) might be a start point to look up all other scripts names and read them directly. Perhaps more correct way to do that is to chown root:webserveraccountname /your/path/to/httpdocs and chmod 0710. Then, again, if your webserver will be compromised, cracker will have access to index.(EXT) so he again can do the same trick.

To get access to a directory you need r-x permissions on that directory(to cd into it). Files should only get r-- permissions.

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the exception to the above rule would be rwx for directories and rw- for files in places where files are going to be uploaded or modified by the webserver (such as temporary files, an upload directory or a cache for information downloaded from other servers, such as images etc..)

but never under any circumstances should the root directory of www or the root of the script's directory or it's configuration files or any of the program or html documents be writable by anyone but the owner of the document (also the web server should not be the owner of anything other then files uploaded via http or downloaded by scripts or created by scripts) otherwise malicious code could be injected into your web site that could be used to spread an infection to anyone who browses your site or collects information from them as they enter it into your computer

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