SE Linux is enabled by default in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Manjaro (iirc), so I stopped reading at the introduction. The exploit presupposes the lack of this basic hardening.
I'm not sure how it helps here. User-level access in enough, isn't it?
Wayland Keylogger
11–20 of 121 posts
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#12I do use Linux (almost) exclusively, but I'm well aware of the security limitations. Forget this keylogger. All you need is to somehow write a single line into .profile or .bashrc, which basically every executed program can do, and you own the user account. You can intercept every program with wrappers by changing PATH or adding desktop entries in .local/share/applications, extract all data from applications, use LD_…
Forget it? It’s the main selling point of Wayland that keyloggers are impossible.
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#13Re: Wayland Keylogger
#14SE Linux is enabled by default in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Manjaro (iirc), so I stopped reading at the introduction. The exploit presupposes the lack of this basic hardening.
Of those distributions, only Fedora sets SELinux to enforcing by default. Moreover, AFAIK Fedora (and RHEL) are the only distributions that had wide-scale testing of the reference policy [1] [2]. So, if you enable SELinux with the reference policy on the other distributions that you mention, it is likely that you will run into all kinds of issues.
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#15I do use Linux (almost) exclusively, but I'm well aware of the security limitations. Forget this keylogger. All you need is to somehow write a single line into .profile or .bashrc, which basically every executed program can do, and you own the user account. You can intercept every program with wrappers by changing PATH or adding desktop entries in .local/share/applications, extract all data from applications, use LD_…
Forget it? It’s the main selling point of Wayland that keyloggers are impossible.
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Re: Wayland Keylogger
#16this seems completely miss the point of wayland security. Of course if you run the programs under same account you can keylog them. You can also connect to Chrome and steal the cookies directly, wrap terminal to install pty loggers, backdoor ssh and so on. The real point of wayland security is you can safely run multiple user accounts on the same desktop. And the LD_PRELOAD tricks (or PATH tricks etc..) do not work a…
> this seems completely miss the point of wayland security.
The point is that Wayland security is useless because the security boundary on Unix is fundamentally the user account:
> Of course if you run the programs under same account you can keylog them. You can also connect to Chrome and steal the cookies directly, wrap terminal to install pty loggers, backdoor ssh and so on.
> The real point of wayland security is you can safely run multiple user accounts on the same desktop. And the LD_PRELOAD tricks (or PATH tricks etc..) do not work across accounts, unless you are doing something stupid.
If this indeed be the point, then I ask you to come with a single official Wayland reference that promotes it as such and phrases it as such, as that is not the point the advocates make at all, and they phrase it simply as “One can no longer be keylogged by malware.”, which is a very dubious claim.
Once malicious software has been executed as one's user, that is the end of it, and one's entire account can now be treated as forfeit, and Wayland does nothing, and cannot do anything due to the fundamental designs of Unix to stop that.
Furthermore, there are already quite a few mechanisms on X11 to achieve what you illustrated. — that does not mean that Wayland is useless, it simply means that it does not provide a solution to any existing problem in this specific field that is not provided elsewhere.
There are two common claims that are very frequently made by official sources such as GNOME that are false:
- X11 cannot be sandboxed.
- With Wayland, one cannot be keylogged.
> that's it -- this will stop this attack, and many others, cold. And will not require any SELinux.
Yes, never running malicious code with the privileges of one's user would stop it from gaining access to said user, but the promises of Wayland are protections even if the former have happened. — this is false advertisement.
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#17I do use Linux (almost) exclusively, but I'm well aware of the security limitations. Forget this keylogger. All you need is to somehow write a single line into .profile or .bashrc, which basically every executed program can do, and you own the user account. You can intercept every program with wrappers by changing PATH or adding desktop entries in .local/share/applications, extract all data from applications, use LD_…
Forget it? It’s the main selling point of Wayland that keyloggers are impossible.
It's hardly the main selling point, but yes, it's often stated in such language that is sufficiently bereft of technical specifics so that the lay user reading it will gain the impression that the aforementioned proof of concept is not possible, but also that, when præsented with it, semantics arguments can be fronted that are more technical, to allow a statement that it wasn't so intended.
On a more practical level: if the statement indeed eventually be phrased so that it does come with the technical truth, the practical gains are not of security, but performance, and only when not using nVidia cards.
Better phrased, it is:
> The current state of Wayland is that it allows for better hardware acceleration when sandboxing on X11 , except with nVidia cards, where on many compositors it does not allow allow for hardware acceleration at all.
X11 allows for similar sandboxing by way of a nested server, but hardware acceleration is insufficiently implemented as of this moment. — this is not a theoretical impossibility and it could be implemented; it simply isn't fully, at this time.
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#18I do use Linux (almost) exclusively, but I'm well aware of the security limitations. Forget this keylogger. All you need is to somehow write a single line into .profile or .bashrc, which basically every executed program can do, and you own the user account. You can intercept every program with wrappers by changing PATH or adding desktop entries in .local/share/applications, extract all data from applications, use LD_…
I would love to see a real permission system on Linux, where applications have to explicitly ask me before accessing things deemed important. It's never been a problem for me, but it would give me some comfort.
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#19Windows is arguably more secure because it has the secure desktop that isn’t controlled by user applications. Unfortunately it doesn’t help with all kinds of password entry.
So does Android, but the same security is what creates a “walled garden”.
To limit what malicious software that runs as one's user can do, one must limit what the user can do, and that's exactly what they attempt to do.
I personally præfer that the user be trusted to be wise enough to run software that he does not trust in a contained environment, and he be given the freedom to control his own environment as he pleases.
Re: Wayland Keylogger
#20I do use Linux (almost) exclusively, but I'm well aware of the security limitations. Forget this keylogger. All you need is to somehow write a single line into .profile or .bashrc, which basically every executed program can do, and you own the user account. You can intercept every program with wrappers by changing PATH or adding desktop entries in .local/share/applications, extract all data from applications, use LD_…
Forget it? It’s the main selling point of Wayland that keyloggers are impossible.
How does that interact with things like the steam overlay were a third party UI is hooked into an application? I would expect that either that functionality is completely broken or that you could still implement keyloggers going this route.