Ed White wrote:
The big problem is that the attack is possible thanks to the way X Windows is designed,
No, it's due to the implementation of the common X servers and OS'es on x86 and similar platforms. Many X servers on other platforms always had the critical parts of the drivers in the kernel - for instance on Solaris SPARC, Xsun doesn't run with root permissions at all since the kernel drivers do all the work. Various other "old school" Unixes did the same - it works well when you have a single body controlling the hardware, drivers & X server.
and so the only way to eradicate it is to redesign it, moving video card driver
> into the kernel, Which kernel? You wrote to XFree86 which runs on a wide range of kernels with the same user-space drivers. Would you move those into the Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, GNU Hurd, Solaris, and all other supported kernels, multiplying the number of drivers maintained by the number of kernels supported? What about kernels like Linux where the interfaces change between versions regularly? Or would you instead try to create some sort of common driver layer you insert into all of them and just have the headache of maintaining that for all supported kernels/versions? -- -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith@xxxxxxx Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
