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On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 14:12, Jan Klod <janklodvan@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> On Tuesday 25 November 2008 19:58:42 RB wrote: |
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>> KDE (and to a lesser extent X) pretty much nullifies most application |
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>> isolation efforts you're going to make. |
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> |
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> Well, then I would like to ask your opinion about other available window |
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> managers. Any better solutions in a direction "stupid and safe"? |
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On my part, none. All my hardened boxes are headless servers and my |
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GUI workstations have disposable configurations. Even if stepping |
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away from a window manager and all its associated programs, you still |
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have X and the numerous associated security holes (Javier outlined |
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those well). |
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|
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For keyloggers, X is designed so that any application you allow to |
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connect to it can capture any of your keystrokes. That means that |
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regardless of whether you're running X as user1, google earth as |
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user2, and firefox as user3, both of those applications can pick up |
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all of your keystrokes. Since you're running as separate users, you |
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have already (implicitly or not) allowed those users to freely connect |
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to your X session. Game over. |
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|
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X and window managers used to be much more unfriendly, you had to do |
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things like 'xhost +root@localhost' to allow root to pop up an Nmap |
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GUI. Now, they all handle those things behind the scenes and for the |
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most part get it right for the large majority of users. This is our |
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reality as desktop Linux tries to appeal to a broader audience. |
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