[ubuntu-hardened] Securing access to the X Server.

[Seth Arnold]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 02:44:22PM +0200, daniel curtis wrote:
> Over a decade or even longer? I thought, that this is a matter of a few
> years, but not a decade! :- )

Heh, just for fun I went looking through the Debian bug archive; I found
this one, which added -nolisten TCP to gdm back in 2001:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=92909

> There is one thing, which bothers me; in his post, Mr Deslauriers wrote,
> that Ubuntu 12.04 uses gnome-screensaver, not XScreenSaver, so there is no
> need to edit /etc/X11/app-defaults/XScreenSaver file, right? But, what
> about users with Desktop Environment different than GNOME?

You only have to edit /etc/X11/app-defaults/XScreenSaver if you want to
make the settings for all users on the computer. Individual users can of
course make their own ~/.xscreensaver or ~/.Xdefaults files with their own
settings.

Note that automatic locking is not safe in X11. If you happen to select a
menu entry from popular toolkits or perform other operations before
walking away from your computer, then the screensaver won't be able to
grab exclusive use of the input devices.

The only safe way to lock your X session is to manually lock it before
walking away.

Thanks
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