XDM has the same problem as netscape ?!

Josh M. Osborne stripes at va.pubnix.com
Thu Sep 21 17:19:30 PDT 1995


In message <43s1j7$nd3 at calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>, Ian Goldberg writes:
>In article <9509210631.AA18308 at sfi.santafe.edu>,
>Nelson Minar <nelson at santafe.edu> wrote:
>>Last time I looked, the MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 scheme used in X11R4 had
>>the same problem: the random seed was based on the current time to the
>>microsecond, modulo the granularity of the system clock. I think I
>>figured that on my hardware, if I could figure out which minute the X
>>server started (easy with finger), I'd only have to try a few
>>thousand keys or so. Caveat: I never actually proved the idea.
>
>Wow.  I just checked, and Nelson's right.
[...]

Of corse you can do what I have been doing for years:

$cookie=`good-source-or-random-hex-strings`
xauth add $DISPLAY MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 $cookie
xinit ~/.xinitrc $DISPLAY -- $server :$port -auth $XAUTHORITY

(assuming you set the various variables correctly)

This will allow you to gennerate your own cookies rather then
relying on MIT.  (I actually have C code to set the cookie dirrectly,
since I don't really care to have it visable to ps, even breifly).

Unfortunitly X will blat the "secret" out in the clear every time you
make an X connection, so it still isn't very good.






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