From: "Josh M. Osborne" <stripes@va.pubnix.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 95 17:19:30 PDT
To: iang@cs.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: XDM has the same problem as netscape ?!
In-Reply-To: <43s1j7$nd3@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
Message-ID: <UAA01743.199509220019@garotte.va.pubnix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In message <43s1j7$nd3@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>, Ian Goldberg writes:
>In article <9509210631.AA18308@sfi.santafe.edu>,
>Nelson Minar <nelson@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.