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Re: [PLUG] OpenGL Screensavers
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On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 09:37:02PM -0400, brent timothy saner spake thus:
> Brian Vagnoni wrote:
> > However and in the spirit of discussion; who cares if someone wants to have bouncing balls on their desktop during idle. I know I don't. As long as screen saver is appropriate for the situation, more power to you.
>
> "more /power/ to you" is a pun, i hope?
>
>
> > If a ******trusted****** screen saver performs any useful function at all it provides a *********very small ****** level of desktop privacy. Which is ********slightly******* enhanced when it includes password protection.
>
> care to provide a case-scenario for us to demonstrate how it doesn't add
> a beneficial amount of security? granted, it's no end-all be-all, but
> i'd be interested in hearing about known flaws/weaknesses in it.
*snip*
Well, if the user's X session was started from the linux console (as
opposed to, say, via a display manager) and the 'DontZap' X11 option is
set to 'off' (which it is by default), then someone can walk up to a
desktop with a password-protected xscreensaver running and use
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill X. This will drop the user down into the
linux console still logged in as the user whose X session was running.
The vlock[0] program can be used to lock the machine at the virtual
console level ('vlock -a' will lock all virtual consoles), which is
safer IMHO than xscreensaver in the above scenario. It goes without
saying, of course, that the machine is not actually safe if someone has
physical access to it...
I don't use display managers, so don't know how they behave with regard
to the 'DontZap' X11 option. Anyone?
-Al
[0] http://cthulhu.c3d2.de/~toidinamai/vlock/vlock.html
http://freshmeat.net/projects/vlock/
http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vlock.html
--
a l a n d. s a l e w s k i salewski@worldnet.att.net
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