35 Host Security

Emacs runs inside an operating system such as GNU/Linux, and relies on the operating system to check security constraints such as accesses to files. The default settings for Emacs are designed for typical use; they may require some tailoring in environments where security is more of a concern, or less of a concern, than usual. For example, file-local variables can be risky, and you can set the variable enable-local-variables to :safe or (even more conservatively) to nil; conversely, if your files can all be trusted and the default checking for these variables is irritating, you can set enable-local-variables to :all. See Safety of File Variables.

See Security Considerations in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more information about security considerations when using Emacs as part of a larger application.