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NAME

       Xsecurity - X display access control

OVERVIEW

       X   provides   mechanism  for  implementing  many  access  control  systems.   The  sample
       implementation includes five mechanisms:
           Host Access                   Simple host-based access control.
           MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1            Shared plain-text "cookies".
           XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1           Secure DES based private-keys.
           SUN-DES-1                     Based on Sun's secure rpc system.
           Server Interpreted            Server-dependent methods of access control
       Not all of these are available in all builds or implementations.

ACCESS SYSTEM DESCRIPTIONS

       Host Access
              Any client on a host in the host access control list is allowed  access  to  the  X
              server.   This  system  can  work  reasonably well in an environment where everyone
              trusts everyone, or when only a single person can log in to a given machine, and is
              easy  to  use when the list of hosts used is small.  This system does not work well
              when multiple people can log in to a single  machine  and  mutual  trust  does  not
              exist.  The list of allowed hosts is stored in the X server and can be changed with
              the xhost command.   The list is stored in the server by network address, not  host
              names,  so  is not automatically updated if a host changes address while the server
              is running.  When using the more secure mechanisms listed below, the host  list  is
              normally  configured  to  be  the  empty list, so that only authorized programs can
              connect to the display.   See the GRANTING ACCESS section of the Xserver  man  page
              for details on how this list is initialized at server startup.

       MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1
              When  using  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1, the client sends a 128 bit "cookie" along with the
              connection setup information.  If the cookie presented by the  client  matches  one
              that  the  X server has, the connection is allowed access.  The cookie is chosen so
              that it is hard to guess; xdm generates such cookies automatically when  this  form
              of  access control is used.  The user's copy of the cookie is usually stored in the
              .Xauthority  file  in  the  home  directory,  although  the  environment   variable
              XAUTHORITY  can be used to specify an alternate location.  Xdm automatically passes
              a cookie to the server for each new login session, and stores  the  cookie  in  the
              user file at login.

              The cookie is transmitted on the network without encryption, so there is nothing to
              prevent a network snooper from obtaining the data and using it to  gain  access  to
              the X server.  This system is useful in an environment where many users are running
              applications on the same machine and want to avoid interference  from  each  other,
              with  the  caveat  that  this  control is only as good as the access control to the
              physical network.  In environments where network-level snooping is difficult,  this
              system can work reasonably well.

       XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1
              Sites  who  compile  with  DES support can use a DES-based access control mechanism
              called XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1.  It is similar in usage to MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 in that a
              key  is  stored  in the .Xauthority file and is shared with the X server.  However,
              this key consists of two parts - a 56 bit DES encryption key and 64 bits of  random
              data used as the authenticator.

              When  connecting  to  the  X  server, the application generates 192 bits of data by
              combining the current time in seconds (since 00:00 1/1/1970 GMT) along with 48 bits
              of "identifier".  For TCP/IPv4 connections, the identifier is the address plus port
              number; for local connections it is the process ID and 32 bits to form a unique  id
              (in  case  multiple connections to the same server are made from a single process).
              This 192 bit packet is then encrypted using the DES key and sent to the  X  server,
              which  is  able  to  verify if the requestor is authorized to connect by decrypting
              with the same DES key and validating the authenticator and additional  data.   This
              system   is  useful  in  many  environments  where  host-based  access  control  is
              inappropriate and where network security cannot be ensured.

       SUN-DES-1
              Recent versions of SunOS (and some other systems) have included a secure public key
              remote  procedure  call  system.   This  system is based on the notion of a network
              principal; a user name and NIS domain pair.  Using this system, the  X  server  can
              securely  discover  the  actual  user  name of the requesting process.  It involves
              encrypting data with the X server's public key, and so the identity of the user who
              started the X server is needed for this; this identity is stored in the .Xauthority
              file.  By extending the semantics of "host  address"  to  include  this  notion  of
              network principal, this form of access control is very easy to use.

              To allow access by a new user, use xhost.  For example,
                  xhost keith@ ruth@mit.edu
              adds  "keith" from the NIS domain of the local machine, and "ruth" in the "mit.edu"
              NIS domain.  For keith or ruth to successfully connect to the  display,  they  must
              add the principal who started the server to their .Xauthority file.  For example:
                  xauth add expo.lcs.mit.edu:0 SUN-DES-1 unix.expo.lcs.mit.edu@our.domain.edu
              This  system  only  works  on machines which support Secure RPC, and only for users
              which have set up the appropriate public/private key pairs on  their  system.   See
              the  Secure  RPC  documentation  for  details.  To access the display from a remote
              host, you may have to do a keylogin on the remote host first.

       Server Interpreted
              The Server Interpreted method provides two strings to the X server for entry in the
              access control list.  The first string represents the type of entry, and the second
              string contains the value of the entry.   These  strings  are  interpreted  by  the
              server  and  different  implementations  and  builds may support different types of
              entries.  The types supported in the  sample  implementation  are  defined  in  the
              SERVER  INTERPRETED  ACCESS  TYPES  section  below.    Entries  of this type can be
              manipulated via xhost.  For example to add  a  Server  Interpreted  entry  of  type
              localuser with a value of root, the command is xhost +si:localuser:root.

THE AUTHORIZATION FILE

       Except  for  Host  Access  control  and  Server  Interpreted Access Control, each of these
       systems uses data stored in the .Xauthority file to  generate  the  correct  authorization
       information  to  pass  along  to the X server at connection setup.  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 and
       XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 store secret data in the file; so anyone who can  read  the  file  can
       gain  access  to  the  X  server.  SUN-DES-1 stores only the identity of the principal who
       started the server (unix.hostname@domain when the server is started by xdm), and so it  is
       not useful to anyone not authorized to connect to the server.

       Each  entry in the .Xauthority file matches a certain connection family (TCP/IP, DECnet or
       local connections) and X  display  name  (hostname  plus  display  number).   This  allows
       multiple  authorization  entries  for  different  displays to share the same data file.  A
       special connection family (FamilyWild,  value  65535)  causes  an  entry  to  match  every
       display,  allowing  the  entry  to  be  used for all connections.  Each entry additionally
       contains the authorization name and whatever private authorization data is needed by  that
       authorization type to generate the correct information at connection setup time.

       The  xauth  program manipulates the .Xauthority file format.  It understands the semantics
       of the connection families and address formats, displaying them in an easy  to  understand
       format.  It also understands that SUN-DES-1 uses string values for the authorization data,
       and displays them appropriately.

       The X server (when running on a workstation) reads authorization information from  a  file
       name  passed on the command line with the -auth option (see the Xserver manual page).  The
       authorization entries in the file are used to control access to the server.   In  each  of
       the  authorization  schemes  listed  above, the data needed by the server to initialize an
       authorization scheme is identical to the  data  needed  by  the  client  to  generate  the
       appropriate  authorization  information,  so  the same file can be used by both processes.
       This is especially useful when xinit is used.

       MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1
              This system uses 128 bits of data shared between the user and the  X  server.   Any
              collection of bits can be used.  Xdm generates these keys using a cryptographically
              secure pseudo random number generator, and so the key to the next session cannot be
              computed from the current session key.

       XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1
              This  system uses two pieces of information.  First, 64 bits of random data, second
              a 56 bit DES encryption key (again, random data) stored in 8 bytes, the  last  byte
              of  which  is  ignored.   Xdm  generates  these  keys  using the same random number
              generator as is used for MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1.

       SUN-DES-1
              This system needs a string representation of the  principal  which  identifies  the
              associated  X  server.   This information is used to encrypt the client's authority
              information when it is sent to the X server.  When xdm starts the X server, it uses
              the  root  principal  for the machine on which it is running (unix.hostname@domain,
              e.g., "unix.expire.lcs.mit.edu@our.domain.edu").   Putting  the  correct  principal
              name  in the .Xauthority file causes Xlib to generate the appropriate authorization
              information using the secure RPC library.

SERVER INTERPRETED ACCESS TYPES

       The sample implementation includes several Server Interpreted mechanisms:
           IPv6                          IPv6 literal addresses
           hostname                      Network host name
           localuser                     Local connection user id
           localgroup                    Local connection group id

       IPv6   A literal IPv6 address as defined in IETF  RFC  3513.    This  allows  adding  IPv6
              addresses  when  the  X  server  supports  IPv6,  but the xhost client was compiled
              without IPv6 support.

       hostname
              The value must be a hostname as defined in IETF RFC 2396.  Due  to  Mobile  IP  and
              dynamic  DNS,  the  name  service  is  consulted at connection authentication time,
              unlike the traditional  host  access  control  list  which  only  contains  numeric
              addresses  and  does  not automatically update when a host's address changes.  Note
              that this definition of hostname does not allow use of literal IP addresses.

       localuser & localgroup
              On systems which can determine in a secure fashion  the  credentials  of  a  client
              process,  the  "localuser"  and  "localgroup" authentication methods provide access
              based on those  credentials.   The  format  of  the  values  provided  is  platform
              specific.   For POSIX & UNIX platforms, if the value starts with the character '#',
              the rest of the string is treated as a decimal uid or gid, otherwise the string  is
              defined as a user name or group name.

              If  your  system  supports this method and you use it, be warned that some programs
              that proxy connections and are setuid or setgid may get authenticated as the uid or
              gid of the proxy process.  For instance, some versions of ssh will be authenticated
              as the user root, no matter what user is running the ssh client, so on systems with
              such  software,  adding  access  for  localuser:root  may  allow  wider access than
              intended to the X display.

FILES

       .Xauthority

SEE ALSO

       X(7), xdm(1), xauth(1), xhost(1), xinit(1), Xserver(1)