Bug discovered in X11 code

Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on May 3, 2006

A project funded by the US Department of Homeland Security has discovered a bug in X11, the display system used across a wide range of POSIX systems (linux, BSD, and unix) as well as used for platform independence on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macs.

The bug is very serious, but remote activation appears to be blocked by most firewalls, which block remote access to X11. Fixes have already been rolled out for most platforms.

The X11 system seperates the display (or windowing) system from other parts of the operating system. It enforces security seperations and allows remote access, by exposing physical screens as servers (literally, the service they provide is that of displaying data to the user). The X11 protocol is widely supported by a number of operating systems (who provide the servers), applications (who use the service) and utilities. The widely used GTK and QT windowing toolkits typically sit on top of X11 and allow applications to manipulate it in terms of hihg-level objects.

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		Bug discovered in X11 code Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on May 3, 2006 A project funded by the US Department of Homeland Security has discovered a bug in X11, the display system used across a wide range of POSIX systems (linux, BSD, and unix) as well as used for platform independence on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macs. The bug is very serious, but remote activation appears to be blocked by most firewalls, which block remote access to X11. Fixes have already been rolled out for most platforms. The X11 system seperates the display (or windowing) system from other parts of the operating system. It enforces security seperations and allows remote access, by exposing physical screens as servers (literally, the service they provide is that of displaying data to the user). The X11 protocol is widely supported by a number of operating systems (who provide the servers), applications (who use the service) and utilities. The widely used GTK and QT windowing toolkits typically sit on top of X11 and allow applications to manipulate it in terms of hihg-level objects. Cyber-Security \| Cybersecurity \| Department of Homeland Security \| Security \| X11 Stuart's blog Login or register to post comments 3956 reads
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