When screen reader is checked for GDM accessibility, keystrokes entering the user's password are echoed to the TTS system. This allows anyone within earshot to hear the passwd spelled out, unless the user proactively does something to muffle or silence speech during passwd entry--and that's not necessarily easy to do for most users. As a general practice, screen readers have long since learned to squelch passwd entries, whether during login (Windows, Mac), Linux console (Speakup), or in user agents such as browsers accessing remote, password protected sites. Since GDM wants to function as its own screen reader, it needs to handle this security breach appropriately.Description of problem: Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always. Steps to Reproduce: Launch the desktop and select screen reader from the accessibility dropdown. Restart and make sure speech feedback is enabled. Select your user Start typing your password and listen to the TTS echo it. Actual results: Password is echoed character by character. Expected results: Each keystroke during password entry should echo a nonspecific string to TTS such as "asterisk," or "dot," or some such. The actual char doesn't matter--only that there's one per typed keystroke. Additional info:
The good news is that the problem with the password being exposed in the talking login was fixed -- while I *had* the talking login -- in Fedora 20. The bad news is that the talking login itself disappeared when I did an update on February 17 or 18. I did another update last night (Feb. 27) and the talking login is still gone. I'm not even remotely an expert on what to look for, but I note that last week I did not see anything in yum.log for that update indicating an update to gdm.
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Fedora 19 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2015-01-06. Fedora 19 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this bug. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.