Re: X windows: don't install or don't run?

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.security, in article
<1153878500_4837@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jqpx37 wrote:

"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

What is to stop anyone from typing 'runx', 'startx' or even 'xinit'
(with the appropriate path prefix if those commands are not in the
current PATH)?

If ownership and permissions are set appropriately, how could he
execute these?

Setting the permissions such that X is not executable may work, but is a
lot of work - especially to set the permissions back when _you_ need to
use it.

[compton ~]$ find /usr/X11R6/ -type f -perm -004 | wc -l
3101
[compton ~]$ find /usr/X11R6/ -type f -perm -005 | wc -l
288
[compton ~]$ find /usr/X11R6/ -type f -perm -400 | wc -l
3105
[compton ~]$ find /usr/X11R6/ -type f -perm -500 | wc -l
292
[compton ~]$ find /usr/X11R6/ -type f -perm -4500 | wc -l
4
[compton ~]$ find /usr/X11R6/ -type f -perm -2050 | wc -l
1
[compton ~]$

'man find' to see what the '-perm' option is finding.

If your distribution is rpm based, there is a command you can give to
rpm to reset ownership and/or permissions back to what the package manager
thinks is correct ('man rpm'). If you have one of the "popular" Linux
distributions that have a "let me help you" tool to monitor file ownership
and permissions, you'll have to kick that "helper" between the legs, or
it will silently reset the permissions on it's own - just to help you,
you understand.

Old guy
.

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