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  1. #1
    Florian Weimer
    A short warning on the X11 Editres protocol
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    A short warning on the X11 Editres protocol

    The xterm manual page contains a strongly worded warning about the
    allowSendEvents configuration option:

    | allowSendEvents (class AllowSendEvents)
    | Specifies whether or not synthetic key and button events
    | (generated using the X protocol SendEvent request) should be
    | interpreted or discarded. The default is =E2=80=98=E2=80=98false=E2=
    =80=99=E2=80=99 meaning they
    | are discarded. Note that allowing such events creates a very
    | large security hole. The default is =E2=80=98=E2=80=98false.=E2=80=99=
    =E2=80=99

    However, xterm is an Xt application and therefore speaks a
    long-forgotten protocol called Editres. As a result, any Editres
    client (such as "editres") can instruct an xterm window to change its
    allowSendEvents setting. After that, it's possible to send
    synthesized events to the xterm window and hijack the terminal.

    Other Xt applications may have similar issues. If an application is
    SUID or SGID and does not drop privileges early in the startup
    process, a privilege escalation vulnerability might exist (but it's
    probably easier to exploit it by providing carefully constructed
    resource settings from the beginning).

    I'm not sure that the author of the paragraph was right to label this
    as a security hole; certainly it's just a minor one. However, the
    xterm documentation should be updated. (A previous attempt to resolve
    this issue quietly had failed.)

  2. #2
    Frank v Waveren
    A short warning on the X11 Editres protocol
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    Re: A short warning on the X11 Editres protocol


    --2fHTh5uZTiUOsy+g
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    On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 11:37:37PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
    > However, xterm is an Xt application and therefore speaks a
    > long-forgotten protocol called Editres. As a result, any Editres
    > client (such as "editres") can instruct an xterm window to change its
    > allowSendEvents setting. After that, it's possible to send
    > synthesized events to the xterm window and hijack the terminal.

    And even if it weren't toggleable with editres, there's still the
    XTEST extension which seems to be pretty omnipresent these days.
    Basically, you shouldn't be mixing privileges in one X session (even
    using the security extension it's generally something you want to
    avoid, design-wise).


    --=20
    Frank v Waveren Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
    fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100 5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
    Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8 FA00 7D51 468D 62C8


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