Open Source Software Community - it's about ethics in Code of Conducts

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You didn’t make that caveat before, it’s only when you’re shown to be talking out of your ass that you make up new rules.

(Also, this bug predates the name “xorg”.)


You have no way of knowing that. You don’t know if the folks listed as discovering the bug kept it private for a while before disclosing it. You don’t know if other folks also knew about the bug and kept their mouths shut.

Please stop confidently making up claims about security. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
That's the topic of the comment I replied to. Maybe you should read the thread before you reply to somebody. Do you even know what xsecurity and xace is?
Also I'm working on my own x11 server implementation: https://git.dec05eba.com/phoenix/about/ do you think I'm not familiar with the topic?
 
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That's the topic of the comment I replied to. Maybe you should read the thread before you reply to somebody. Do you even know what xsecurity and xace is?
“Nobody has got their security or privacy compromised through x11 in the 40 years that it has existed.” —you

I demonstrated that to be plainly false. Then you claimed that you were only talking about x11 protocols, despite not having used the word “protocol” in this thread since February.

Also I'm working on my own x11 server implementation: https://git.dec05eba.com/phoenix/about/ do you think I'm not familiar with the topic?
I do not think you’re familiar with the topic. I think you’re a dishonest dilettante.
 
“Nobody has got their security or privacy compromised through x11 in the 40 years that it has existed.” —you

I demonstrated that to be plainly false. Then you claimed that you were only talking about x11 protocols, despite not having used the word “protocol” in this thread since February.


I do not think you’re familiar with the topic. I think you’re a dishonest dilettante.
Everybody knows that the xorg server has had vulnerabilities reported. There are vulnerabilities reported and fixed every year. Every software has vulnerabilities, that's unrelated to x11 itself (and xsecurity and xace). I obviously meant that nobody has run a x11 keylogger on their system because of malware, that stole their password and other sensitive information. The malware you posted has also not been run by anybody and has had their information stolen. You're free to prove me otherwise. Of course people did take advantage of x11 (to run applications on other users computers) for fun at school before user restriction was added and enabled by distros (with xsecurity). It's a security theater to pretend that something is a real issue when it's not.
 
Of course people did take advantage of x11 (to run applications on other users computers) for fun at school before user restriction was added and enabled by distros (with xsecurity).
…which constitutes a compromise of security and privacy. Which you claimed has never happened.

EDIT: Based on your agile dodging of accountability for your bogus claims, I now believe you’re a woman.
 
…which constitutes a compromise of security and privacy. Which you claimed has never happened.

EDIT: Based on your agile dodging of accountability for your bogus claims, I now believe you’re a woman.
There appear to be several malware incidents that did use X11 for keylogging and/or screen capture. Not an X11 vulnerability but just the way it's designed that once they could become the user they could watch the user.
2. The Commercialization Phase: Banking Trojans (2013 – 2015)
As Linux desktops gained adoption, cybercriminals began porting Windows-style information-stealing capabilities to Linux architectures.
  • Hand of Thief (2013): Recognized as one of the first sophisticated, commercially sold Linux desktop banking trojans. Rather than running in the kernel, it targeted the user space. It heavily exploited the X11 / Xorg server’s lack of application isolation, using global hooks to function as a form grabber and keylogger to specifically capture online banking credentials typed into Firefox or Chrome.
  • Linux.BackDoor.Xunpes.1 (Early 2016): A specialized piece of spyware that researchers found targeting retail point-of-sale or specialized hardware (such as Bitcoin ATMs running Linux). It was configured as a classic backdoor with explicit commands to silently trigger JPEG screenshots and log system input data.

3. The Cross-Platform Spyware Shift (2016 – 2018)
Attackers started using cross-platform development frameworks to infect Windows, macOS, and Linux concurrently with the exact same capabilities.
  • Backdoor.Mokes (2016): Written in C++ using the Qt framework, this malware family targeted multiple operating systems. Once executed on Linux, it automatically dropped monitoring loops that collected screenshots and captured global keystrokes, saving the data silently to the /tmp/ directory before uploading it to a command-and-control (C2) server.
  • MiKey (2016): Discovered by researchers as a tightly optimized, low-detection Linux keylogger ported alongside Windows backdoors. It relied on reading native keyboard event structures directly out of the user session environment.

4. Modern Desktop Espionage (2019 – Present)
Modern strains focus on social engineering to blend into desktop environments or hide inside software supply chains.
  • EvilGnome (2019): An advanced piece of Linux desktop spyware designed to masquerade as a legitimate GNOME desktop shell extension. It contained specific functional threads called "Shooters". The ShooterDisplay module utilized Cairo graphic libraries to continuously capture desktop screenshots, while other modules recorded audio from microphones.
  • Quasar Linux / QLNX (Recent): A Linux adaptation of the well-known Quasar system administration tool repurposed as malware. Recent samples found in software supply chain attacks feature dedicated internal command IDs (such as 0xA2 for instant screen capture and 0xB0 for triggering live keyloggers via /dev/input or the X11 framework).
Obviously, if you're a member of the input group then it doesn't matter if you're running X11 or Wayland as either way you'd lose. Maybe similar if you're a member of video or render. Depending on how your particular Linux assigns /dev/dri permissions.
 
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There appear to be several malware incidents that did use X11 for keylogging and/or screen capture. Not an X11 vulnerability but just the way it's designed that once they could become the user they could watch the user.
Was anyone actually the victim of one of such attacks, that specifically targeted x11 keylogger/screenshot (and was the user safe if they instead ran wayland)? If anyone was, then I'll take back what I said. Because there is a difference between malware existing (anyone can write malware) and it having affected people.
That is related to what I mentioned before. Nobody really cares about security on the linux desktop as there are vulnerabilities that affect all users on most distros, including wayland users. But since nobody (to my knowledge) has actually had their system hacked or had their creditcard information stolen or anything like that from the linux desktop (from these attack vector), no users (and distro maintainers) actually care enough to lock down those attack vectors. On most distros there is no security (or more specifically privacy issue) difference between running x11 and wayland, in practice.
 
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Obviously, if you're a member of the input group then it doesn't matter if you're running X11 or Wayland as either way you'd lose.
Yeah which is why the Wayland Cultists using security as a reason to deprecate Xorg is stupid. If an attacker is in a position to mess with Xorg then it's too fucking late and using Wayland wouldn't do anything
 
Yeah which is why the Wayland Cultists using security as a reason to deprecate Xorg is stupid. If an attacker is in a position to mess with Xorg then it's too fucking late and using Wayland wouldn't do anything
The exploit I linked to from 2006 doesn’t require you to be “in a position to mess with Xorg”. You run it as an unprivileged non-admin user and you get a root shell.

Also note that the exploit was written in 2006 but Solaris didn’t find out about it or patch it until 2012. If you google the name of the Solaris 8 patch provided in the exploit, you find out it was released November 2012: https://getupdates.oracle.com/readme/119067-12

I’m sure no fun or security/privacy compromises were had in the intervening 6 years. :lit:

This instinctual disbelief that Unix/Linux systems don’t get compromised is particularly hilarious if you lived through the incessant hacker-on-hacker wars. (Notably, the one factor that dramatically decreased the amount of hackers hacking other hackers was….. grsecurity.)

Enjoy the most thrilling journal of documenting hacked hackers, Zero For 0wned.

 
The exploit I linked to from 2006 doesn’t require you to be “in a position to mess with Xorg”. You run it as an unprivileged non-admin user and you get a root shell.

Also note that the exploit was written in 2006 but Solaris didn’t find out about it or patch it until 2012. If you google the name of the Solaris 8 patch provided in the exploit, you find out it was released November 2012: https://getupdates.oracle.com/readme/119067-12

I’m sure no fun or security/privacy compromises were had in the intervening 6 years. :lit:

This instinctual disbelief that Unix/Linux systems don’t get compromised is particularly hilarious if you lived through the incessant hacker-on-hacker wars. (Notably, the one factor that dramatically decreased the amount of hackers hacking other hackers was….. grsecurity.)

Enjoy the most thrilling journal of documenting hacked hackers, Zero For 0wned.

We're not saying nothing gets owned, we're saying that Xorg and Wayland security doesn't actually matter because attackers can own them regardless.
 
Note if someone has unauthorized access to a non privileged user on your machine you should probably figure out how that happened and fix it rather than worry about how they could use X11 to gain root

If the way of access is via existing unauthorized but unprivileged access I think that's pretty secure

Also a default install of Linux is pretty secure even with all ports exposed to the internet. It's whatever you add to it

Security is definitely important, but nowadays security "researchers" blow things way out of proportion
 
Note if someone has unauthorized access to a non privileged user on your machine you should probably figure out how that happened and fix it rather than worry about how they could use X11 to gain root

If the way of access is via existing unauthorized but unprivileged access I think that's pretty secure

Also a default install of Linux is pretty secure even with all ports exposed to the internet. It's whatever you add to it

Security is definitely important, but nowadays security "researchers" blow things way out of proportion
Yeah, especially when things like a lot of the local privesc that only harm Google and others that try to lock people out of their own devices get a trademarked name and logo.

And the entire namespaces saga has been a mess trying to force weird features in the name of security onto the kernel leading to a massive exposed surface that was never intended to be hardened.
 
Security is definitely important, but nowadays security "researchers" blow things way out of proportion
It reminds me a lot of how in scientific circles scientists will fudge things sometimes to have some kind of relevant positive outcome in a paper instead of just admitting that it all was just irrelevant noise (even though that can be scientifically valuable too) because the former is more valuable in furthering the scientist's career. Every security researcher wants to find the biggest exploit ever so it's quoted more and makes the security researcher in question more relevant so they're not above misrepresenting the severity of any given exploit to reach that goal. The number of times some exploit was played up to end all computers just to in the end require local access to the machine or a user with almost-root-privs or have somewhere in fineprint that the exploit is mathematically infeasible or some similar nonsense is kind of crazy.

It wouldn't even be so bad if people realized this but they just keep eating this self-serving nonsense up . I understand erring on the side of caution but people are way too uncritical of security research.
 
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It reminds me a lot of how in scientific circles scientists will fudge things sometimes to have some kind of relevant positive outcome in a paper instead of just admitting that it all was just irrelevant noise (even though that can be scientifically valuable too) because the former is more valuable in furthering the scientist's career. Every security researcher wants to find the biggest exploit ever so it's quoted more and makes the security researcher in question more relevant so they're not above misrepresenting the severity of any given exploit to reach that goal. The number of times some exploit was played up to end all computers just to in the end require local access to the machine or a user with almost-root-privs or have somewhere in fineprint that the exploit is mathematically infeasible or some similar nonsense is kind of crazy.

It wouldn't even be so bad if people realized this but they just keep eating this self-serving nonsense up .
Its all publicity poison. Security research right now is the current thing for getting fast and easy clout because even an initiate programmer can point Claude at $CODE_BASE and ask it to find something or other. The overwhelming majority of security reports you get today are all local priv esc. Not that they don't matter, but they are hardly worth even a third of the attention they get. Its all clout farming. Not that I can blame them of course, given the current state of things of both corporate work and academia.
 
The tech industry (basically a homosexual Eyes Wide Shut sex cult/Ponzi scheme run out of Silicon Valley) has decided that only a handful of awful naming conventions are now allowed:
  • Names that would normally end in "-er", but delete the "e", with Grindr being the most notorious
  • Names that are baby talk, e.g., Google, Hadoop
  • Names that are offensively twee and quirky mutations of normal English words, e.g., Hpricot
  • Names that are four letters long and can be made into a tidy logo if you put it all in lowercase Helvetica, e.g., Ring, Tivo, Hulu, Roku (smart TV bullshit or Perl 6, your choice)

The more rules your name satisfies, the more likely it is that Paul Graham or Marc Andreesen will invite you to an initiation ritual where you get some seed capital and a prolapsed rectum.
Tried. Didn’t work out. Fick them
 
I'm so over talking about Wayland. It's just a failed project in my mind and I don't care if people disagree. I'm just going to keep using X11. Nothing I rely on is even talking about removing X11 support. It fits my use case perfectly, unlike Wayland.

Despite the insistent credentialism of the Wayland devs, they've made poor decisions at every turn. Wayland is fundamentally flawed as a concept. The "perfect frame" obsession. The decision to ignore explicit sync until it became impossible to ignore the technical reality of modern graphics APIs. Wayland still can't present a cursor on the screen without it feeling like soupy shit. WDDM doesn't have this problem, Quartz doesn't have this problem and they're both "tear free". X11 doesn't have this problem either. Check out my benchmark: https://gitgud.io/CrunkLord420/crunkbench

Wayland is the biggest boondoggle in the history of FOSS. It's so easy to come up with conspiracies about how Red Hat intentionally pushed this shit to hold the Linux desktop back. The alternative is just ego and incompetence. There should be books written about this. The meme about Wayland being a glorified "kiosk display server" feel on point.

PS. smdh at people arguing with certified code contributor @dec05eba
 
Wayland is the biggest boondoggle in the history of FOSS. It's so easy to come up with conspiracies about how Red Hat intentionally pushed this shit to hold the Linux desktop back. The alternative is just ego and incompetence. There should be books written about this. The meme about Wayland being a glorified "kiosk display server" feel on point.
To avoid stagnating on wayland hate here: in the beginning forcing a fresh start seemed like a good idea, and Qt also had a good approach where they abstracted away a lot of both the server and client side (similar to wlroots).
And stuff like Samuel's Wolfenstein-like "Maze" compositor demoing qwaylandcompositor was pretty mindblowing at the time (paid of for trolltech to hire demosceners imho).

But yeah, in the end wayland never delivered and I don't foresee switching away from X myself either.
 
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