Vulnerability Development: RE: Problem with xkill

[anthony gruppuso <agruppus () jcals army mil>]

I understand that, we use a very strict host access control list here on
all Xserver based devices/products; I just thought it was interesting
that xkill behaved in that manner.  Initally I was under the impression
that it would function like a graphical kill, but apparently that is not
the case.

Anthony (Joe) Gruppuso

-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 5:09 PM
To: Anthony Gruppuso
Cc: Bugtraq () securityfocus com; vuln-dev () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Problem with xkill 


On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 14:54:03 EST, Anthony Gruppuso said:

> I don't know what possesed me to try this, but under Digital UNIX 5.0,
> as a normal user, I was able to set my DISPLAY to the IP address of
> another user who was running a seperate session, and run xkill.
xkill (like any other X client) uses the standard X access control
scheme.

Most likely, the other user had done an 'xhost +' or 'xhost +yourhost'.

That's why xauth and friends exist, to stop games like this...

-- 
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Computer Systems Senior Engineer
                                Virginia Tech