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From: levy@mtcchi.uucp (2656-Daniel R. Levy(0000000)0000)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Security issues with X windows -- 2nd query attempt -- not joking!
Message-ID: <1990Sep14.203917.2043@mtcchi.uucp>
Date: 14 Sep 90 20:39:17 GMT
Organization: Memorex Telex Corporation NSBG/STP
Lines: 30

Well, my first query drew a deafening silence.  I get a mental picture of a few
dozen X hackers sitting at their workstations and X terminals snickering at
this here ignorant rube: "X windows?  Security?  He kidding?  What steenking
security?  Hyuk hyuk hyuk hyuk hyuk hyuk." :-)

No, really, no kidding, I'd appreciate advice or references from anyone who can
help apprise me of the security pitfalls of X windows.  We'd like to make it
reasonably difficult (given the existence of a common, unencrypted ethernet)
for someone to spy on someone else's X window, or to pick up that window on a
different terminal if the original terminal crashes.  We'd also like to be able
to support a lockscreen function on an X terminal (we're thinking NCD terminals
at this point but might consider others).  Am I hoping for too much from X
windows in this regard?  Any such thing as security add-ons to X windows?
(Presumably this would require encryption/decryption at both client and server
network connections if not in the machines themselves.)  Paranoid system
administrators would like to know.

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-- 
 Daniel R. Levy * uunet!tellab5!mtcchi!levy * These views not on behalf of MTC
So far as I can remember, there is not one    | ... therefore be as shrewd as
word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.| serpents [see Gen. 3] and harm-
-- Bertrand Russell [Berkeley UNIX fortune]   | less as doves -- JC [Mt. 10:16]