levy@mtcchi.uucp (2656-Daniel R. Levy(0000000)0000) (09/15/90)
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. ####### # # # # # # # ##### # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ####### # # # # # ### ##### ### # # # ####### # # # # # # ### # # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### # -- 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]