Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:08:44 -0500 (EST) From: Omachonu Ogali <oogali@intranova.net> To: Lars Eighner <eighner@io.com> Cc: bokr@accessone.com, freebsd-security@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Security hole in GNOME Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10002240900040.6636-100000@hydrant.intranova.net> In-Reply-To: <lQQt4AwZqk8B092yn@io.com>
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ICEauthority is NOT for calling someone up, it used for authentication between two XWindows servers, it does not transmit information, rather it protects your XWindows server from being tampered with by defining an access list of what clients/hostnames are allowed access your server, and most of the time that list only contains your local hostname. IF you sat down and ran tcpdump you would see its trying to resolve the hostname you specified for your machine which doesn't exist probably and is calling an external name server to help it, before you go off spreading rumors, try to sit down and study it. On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Lars Eighner wrote: > > bokr@accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote: > |On Wed, 23 Feb 2000 07:52:37 -0600, eighner@io.com (Lars Eighner) > |wrote: > | > |> > |>FreeBSD users should be aware that the stable ports of GNOME > |>will install a spy file named .ICEauthority and information > |>about your system will be transmitted every time a GNOME function > |>is invoked. > > |Can you back up your information, please? Note following: > | > |--begin inclusion-- > |Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 18:57:56 -0500 (EST) > |From: Omachonu Ogali <oogali@intranova.net> > |To: Bengt Richter <bokr@accessone.com> > |cc: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG > |Subject: Re: NG report of "Security hole in GNOME" > | > |That's completely untrue. .ICEauthority has been around for a while > |and if > |you peek at it you'll see it contains authentication information for > |the X > |server, sort of like an xhost (I think). Do man iceauth to read on it > |more, and do us a favor and relay this back to the newsgroup... > > Well, *did* you do man iceauth? If you had you would have found > one little paragraph that refers to commands described "below" > but of course there is no "below." None the less, it should be > clear that the purpose of iceauth is to transmit information about > one system to another system. Furthermore, when you invoke a > GNOME session or one of the GNOME applications, it will bring up > the ppp link and call someone. Suppose MicroSoft made Windows > call them up every time Windows was used? People would be > screaming bloody murder. Why should this behavior be acceptable > from GNOME? > > Moreover, if this behavior were on the up and up, why wouldn't > there be some reasonable documentation? And why isn't there a > way to disable this behavior for machines that are not on an > intranet -- which is the only situation in which this behavior > might be desirable. Try typing ICEauthority or iceauth into > a few of your favorite search engines. There simply is no > explanation of what this is or why anyone thinks it is desirable. > There is one FAQ in French which is a puzzle to me, but which > has be interpreted for me by another correspondent to the > effect that the purpose of ICEauthority is to brand users > with software along the lines of what the Pentium III chip > attempts to do with hardware. Again, when Intel does it, > everyone yelps: so why exactly should such a vaguely documented > "feature" that certainly appears to do the same thing be > accept in GNUware? > > -- +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Omachonu Ogali oogali@intranova.net | | Intranova Networking Group http://tribune.intranova.net | | PGP Key ID: 0xBFE60839 | | PGP Fingerprint: C8 51 14 FD 2A 87 53 D1 E3 AA 12 12 01 93 BD 34 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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