From owner-freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Mon Aug 29 08:51:17 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-x11@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8692ABC76E7 for ; Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:51:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from crest@rlwinm.de) Received: from smtp.rlwinm.de (smtp.rlwinm.de [IPv6:2a01:4f8:201:31ef::e]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5387FC87 for ; Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:51:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from crest@rlwinm.de) Received: from vader9.bultmann.eu (unknown [87.253.189.132]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.rlwinm.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id C78721063B for ; Mon, 29 Aug 2016 10:51:06 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Re: making X secure? To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org References: <57C2D94D.7040906@yahoo.com> From: Jan Bramkamp Message-ID: Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 10:51:06 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <57C2D94D.7040906@yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.22 Precedence: list List-Id: X11 on FreeBSD -- maintaining and support List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:51:17 -0000 On 28/08/16 14:30, Jules Gilbert via freebsd-x11 wrote: > Is this possible?, can X be made secure?? > > I need X for the Mozilla application family. Are those weak from a > security perspective? > > At the moment I'm doing other stuff and (this may be a foolish > thought...,) would accept a quick fix. Probably a really bad idea, I > know. But someone who's apparently good at this has hacked several > releases of FreeBSD and OpenBSD. About OpenBSD, as soon as one adds > (for me, necessary,) applications, it's not as advertised. > > Okay, one more time. Can X be made secure? X.org has an enormous attack surface and compromising the X11 server can allow you to capture all user input (including passwords). You can run a nested X11 server to reduce the attack surface and gain some defense in depth. You can also run Firefox and/or Thunderbird in a jail. The next step would probably be shipping audit records to a remote system with auditdistd. You can further lock down the jail with MAC modules if you like to play a few rounds of whack a mole with your applications.