Re: Privilege-escalation attacks on NT-based Windows are unfixable

From:
Date: 08/22/02 

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 02:59:22 -0400

David Hopwood wrote:
[snip]
> Compare with, say, X-Windows, where it's perfectly possible to have
> windows owned by processes with different privilege levels on the same
> desktop. If by design, any process could simulate keystrokes in an
> xterm where the user was logged into an administrative account, we'd
> consider X-Windows to be hopelessly insecure and unfit for purpose.

Actually, any process *can* send keystrokes to xterm. The *real*
difference is that xterm can ignore simulated keystrokes if it chooses
to, whereas on windows, one can't tell the difference between real and
fake keystrokes, and therefor can't ignore the fake ones. Another
difference is that xterm can prevent real keystrokes from being
intercepted by a keylogger, since it can grab the keyboard.

PS: I have no idea whether or not xterm ignores fake keystrokes... does
it? I recall that there's a menu that lets you turn keyboard grabbing
on and off, but I don't recall any option for ignoring sent events. 

-- 
tr/`4/ /d, print "@{[map --$| ? ucfirst lc : lc, split]},\n" for
pack 'u', pack 'H*', 'ab5cf4021bafd28972030972b00a218eb9720000';

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