Bug 2914

Summary:	[xk]dm falls back to xhost authentication
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	ard
Component:	kdebase	Assignee:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.0	CC:	noar
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-06-14 21:15:45 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description ard 1999-05-18 19:07:24 UTC

When using [kx]dm as prefdm (/etc/X11/prefdm) the directory
/etc/X11/xdm/authdir does not exists, in which case the dm
-failing to store xauth cookies- falls back to using xhost
authentication.

Any user on the system can now grab whatever display (either
local or remote) has logged into the system, and wreck
havoc.

If not sure type xhost at an xterm to check for security. If
it shows:
inet:localhost
LOCAL:
(etc.), your authdir does not exist.
Create it now, or fear the laughter of your colleages
(filling your screen with garbage) :).

------- Additional Comments From   06/05/99 15:32 -------
This doesn t seem to happen with the alpha distrib ...
(shouldn t they all come from the same .src, BTW ? or this is due
do different SPECS files ?)
But I confirm it on i386...
The problem I have now, is that I canot xhost -localhost or xhost
-Mylocdispname ... the command pass silently but tese entries remain
in the list !

Comment 1 Preston Brown 1999-06-08 16:52:59 UTC

We will soon be putting out an errata release of X that explicitly
packages the authdir.  Under some (unexplored) circumstances, xdm will
create the directory for itself, but we cannot rely on this happening.
Thank you for the report.

Comment 2 Preston Brown 1999-06-14 21:15:59 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 2423 ***