Core files in cgi-bin?

[GoWilkes]

I have 4 unknown files in my cgi-bin:

core.6993
core.6995
core.7012
core.7021

They're all close to 18MB in size, and are timestamped 3/1/2017 2:48:28pm. They are also compiled in some way so I can't read the source, but I did see references to "Perl" in there.

I know that I didn't put them there, so they were autogenerated from... somewhere. But I have no idea their purpose.

Any clue on whether I can just delete them? Or where they originated? If it matters, I'm running CentOS 6.10.

 

[DennisMidjord]

They're probably core dumps. Do you have any scripts running from cgi-bin?

 

[GoWilkes]

I have 54 scripts in the cgi-bin that I wrote, and some are accessed dozens of times per minute.

I can't honestly say that I know what a core dump is... just for debugging some problem in 2017? Does that mean that they can be deleted now?

 

[Infopro]

Probably, yes. You might also check here to see if core dumps are enabled or not:
WebHost Manager »Server Configuration »Tweak Settings, Security tab:

Generate core dumps
Allow WHM/Webmail/cPanel services to create core dumps for debugging purposes. Core dumps often contain sensitive information but may be necessary for debugging certain types of service crashes.

Default is off.

 

[GoWilkes]

I checked, and it IS turned off... so that's weird.

Would it be safe to move these to another directory and see if there's any problem?

 

[Infopro]

Yes. Nothing should be reading them.