LibWSM: Wayland Security Modules For Better Wayland Security

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LibWSM: Wayland Security Modules For Better Wayland Security

When X.Org Foundation board member Martin Peres isn't busy hacking on the Nouveau open-source NVIDIA driver, he's often focusing on software security related work through his studies. One of his recent endeavors in trying to improve Linux security is working on a library for Wayland Security Modules (libWSM) to support security decision making on Wayland-based graphic stacks...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTgwOTc

[dh04000]

Does the graphics compositor need a security system? Seems a little unnecessary..... other parts of the system should catch a bad actor before the compositor tries to open a window for it...... or do I not understand this issue? Can someone make sense of this for me?

[TheBlackCat]

Does the graphics compositor need a security system? Seems a little unnecessary..... other parts of the system should catch a bad actor before the compositor tries to open a window for it...... or do I not understand this issue? Can someone make sense of this for me?

How do you guarantee the dialog box asking your your root password was really created by your package manager?

[MuPuF]

Does the graphics compositor need a security system? Seems a little unnecessary..... other parts of the system should catch a bad actor before the compositor tries to open a window for it...... or do I not understand this issue? Can someone make sense of this for me?

Malicious applications don't advertise themselves as so

Unless you lock your system completely with SELinux (with a policy for every app, unlike in fedora) and then consider every application used by the user as being part of the trusted code-base, then you may be right.

However, applications can execute arbitrary code sent by a (remote) user. If apps have more privileges than they should, an attacker can use these privileges to gain more of them until becoming root.

[dh04000]

How do you guarantee the dialog box asking your your root password was really created by your package manager?

Oh, dialog windows. I forgot about them. That would be a pretty big security hole if dialog windows popped up for a remote user, huh? Ok, this seems legit then. Carry on and what what.

[danieru]

How do you guarantee the dialog box asking your your root password was really created by your package manager?

By checking the code and then compiling by my self?

[plonoma]

Security is a tricky subject:
http://it-beta.slashdot.org/story/14...ing-real-gifts

[Attent?ter]

No Live Stream?

[erendorn]

Does the graphics compositor need a security system? Seems a little unnecessary..... other parts of the system should catch a bad actor before the compositor tries to open a window for it...... or do I not understand this issue? Can someone make sense of this for me?

Aside from the mentioned faked box, the following attacks are also of interest:
- at the moment, any application can see what every other applications display on the screen. This should not be the case except for applications whitelisted by the compositor, for screenshoting or remote session plugins.
- Same, for inputs (manage very tightly with display). Not sure what the status is for X, but it's possible that inputs can be intercepted by programs that do not have focus.

I recommend the following reads:

http://mupuf.org/blog/2014/02/19/wayland-compositors-why-and-how-to-handle/

(was mentioned in http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTYxMDA )

[ua=42]

This seems to be related to SE linux.

Judging from the picture, what it does is prevent different apps (which might have different security ratings) from being able to see each other. For example, if the internet browser has a security flaw, this would prevent it from taking screenshots of other programs (for example, your accounting software, LibreOffice, etc).