HNS - Biggest X Window security hole since 2000

[ljknews at mac.com (ljknews)]

At 11:12 AM -0400 5/4/06, Kenneth R. van Wyk wrote:
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> Stories about this (below) X bug and the DHS-sponsored project that found it 
> have been floating around the net all week.  This story caught my eye, 
> though:
>
> http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=3994
>
> The author claims, "This flaw, caused by something as seemingly harmless as a 
> missing closing parenthesis, allowed local users to execute code with root 

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

> privileges, giving them the ability to overwrite system files or initiate 
> denial of service attacks."
>
> So, it sounds like a single byte change in the entire X src tree could fix a 
> bug that could give an attacker complete control of a system.  Lovely...
-- 
Larry Kilgallen