Security is always a concern when granting root privileges to software.

I was security conscious and knowledgeable about UNIX security issues when I wrote queue. It should be paranoid in all the right places, at least provided that the spool directory is root-accessible only (standard installation) or user-accessible (installation by ordinary user) only.

Critical ports allow connections only by hosts in the access control list. Standard checks (TCP/IP wrapper-style) are made to prevent DNS spoofing and IP forwarding as much as possible. In addition, connections must be made from privileged ports (root installation version). queue.c and queued.c run with least-privileges, revoking root privileges as soon as they have verified information and acquired a privileged port.

Moreover, at the time of this writing the source code has been available for a number of months and has been used at numerous installations, including some concerned with security.

However, this does not guarantee that security holes do no exist. It is important that security-conscious users scrutinize the source code and report any potential security problems to bug-queue@gnu.org. By promptly reporting security issues you will be supporting free software by ensuring that the public availability of source code is a security asset.