katinsky@gauss.RUTGERS.EDU (David Katinsky) (04/14/87)
In V11 is there going to be a way to limit which users can talk to an
X server. It would be useful if a person owned the server rather than
the machine. This would prevent randoms from popping up applications
on someone elses screen. Basically, I would like to see things work
like:
$xhost topaz.rutgers.edu:0:katinsky
dmk
--
"Don't talk to me about life...."
Marvin, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
ARPA: katinsky@topaz.rutgers.edu
UUCP: ...{harvard, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4!packard}!topaz!katinskyswick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU.UUCP (04/15/87)
> In V11 is there going to be a way to limit which users can talk to an > X server. The version 11 protocol has fields for doing extended authorization which will, in principle, allow us to add per-user authorization in addition to the current per-host authorization. This is a project that is of considerable interest to us at Project Athena, even though our environment is quickly evolving to one user per host. The big 'gotcha' here is deciding the authenticity of the authorization information you receive on the connection. TCP gives you only the remote host address (which is why we stopped there in X10), but even that requires that you trust the remote host. In our environment hosts are no more trustworthy than users, so we are are solving the problem of authenticating users without relying on the integrity of each machine on the network. We have such a mechanism already, but haven't yet decided how to integrate it with the window system. If you do have trustworthy hosts, a much simpler mechanism may be possible and the X11 protocol allows the server implementor to support multiple authorization mechanisms simultaneously.
RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (04/15/87)
In V11 is there going to be a way to limit which users can talk to an
X server.
If you took time to read the protocol, you would see that there is
indeed a hook to allow various sorts of authorization on a
connection.