Re: X-windows security in Gnome

[Jamie Zawinski <jwz jwz org>]

Brian Cameron wrote:
> 
> Without this degree of security, a person can step over to your
> machine sometime you have forgotten to lock it, and start a process
> that sniffs keyboard entry a la "xspy" and logs your keyboard entry
> to a file.

If someone can download and run arbitrary programs as me, the battle is
already lost.  They could just as easily muck with my init scripts and
$PATH to run trojanized versions of, e.g., xscreensaver or su or ssh
that simply pipe my passwords into /bin/Mail.

-- 
Jamie Zawinski
jwz jwz org             http://www.jwz.org/
jwz dnalounge com       http://www.dnalounge.com/