Vulnerability Development mailing list archives

Problem with xkill


From: Anthony Gruppuso <AGruppus () jcals army mil>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 14:54:03 -0500

To all,

I don't know what possesed me to try this, but under Digital UNIX 5.0,
as a normal user, I was able to set my DISPLAY to the IP address of
another user who was running a seperate session, and run xkill.
Naturally   the xkill cursor was sent to the display of the 'other'
normal user, but what amazed me, was the my xkill process, as a normal
user, was able to kill a process that did not belong to me.  The other
user clicked the cursor on an xterm, and it died.  I checked to see if
the xkill binary was setuid root, but it was not.  This is definatley
not a good 'feature.' :)  Input on this logic would be greatly
appreciated.

Best Regards,

Anthony (Joe) Gruppuso


Current thread: