Ubuntu Manpage: Xsecurity - X display access control

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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.

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