Re: x-forwarding with ssh

[Tom Cook <tom.cook@adelaide.edu.au>]

Vineet Kumar wrote:
[snip]
> Also, please, please, PLEASE! DON'T do this:
> 
> local$ ssh remote
> remote$ export DISPLAY=local:0 # DON'T EVER DO THIS!!!
> remote$ xterm
> 
> As others have already explained. You might as well be using telnet.
> This defeats the entire purpose of tunneling. What you'd be doing in
> this case is telling the remote x client to connect directly to the
> local x server using the unencrypted X protocol. If the local X server
> even accepts it (woody and sid have been told not to, by default) all
> the traffic sent over that connection is in the clear -- might as well
> just be telnet.

My apologies for suggesting this earlier - if I had thought about it I
would have realised it is bad, but obviously I didn't think.

Tom