HNS - Biggest X Window security hole since 2000

[fw at deneb.enyo.de (Florian Weimer)]

> Certainly that part is OS-specific.  On my VMS machine, X-windows processes
> do not run as root.

The X Window server needs elevated privileges because it can trigger
DMA on the graphics card (and thus read arbitrary memory, unless
you've got an IOMMU).  Chances are, however, that your VMS
implementation does not even support the Xrender extension.

Of course, the impact of this vulnerability is exaggerated in the
article.  Local privilege escalation vulnerabilties are numerous.