Bug#729683: gnome-orca: orca reads password text entries aloud
Package: gnome-orca
Version: 3.4.2-2
Severity: normal
Hi Orca folks--
It looks like the gnome screen-reader reads back every key pressed
into a password text entry field. If the computer in question has
public audio enabled, this effectively reads the user's password aloud
to anyone else in the room.
Most egregiously, this happens in the gdm3 login greeter during
password entry. This is particularly bad because anyone (without
authentication) can enable the screen reader for the gdm3 greeter via
the accessibility menu (see http://bugs.debian.org/689559), and leave
it that way for the next person who logs in.
I note that sometimes (i haven't been able to track down what the
difference is), gnome does read each character of the password text as
"asterisk". that's clumsy, but it's way better from a security point
of view than the behavior i'm currently seeing (hearing).
To reproduce the problem, i launched a kvm guest with a minimal wheezy
install, then installed (without Recommends):
xserver-xorg orca gnome-orca pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-x11 xbrlapi
gnome-mag libbonobo2-bin speech-dispatcher-festival festvox-kallpc16k
sox sound-icons openbox at-spi2-core desktop-base
gnome-icon-theme-symbolic
and then, finally:
apt-get install gdm3
It seems likely that an even more minimalist config could reproduce
the problem too.
--dkg
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.2
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages gnome-orca depends on:
ii gir1.2-gtk-3.0 3.4.2-6
ii gir1.2-pango-1.0 1.30.0-1
ii gir1.2-wnck-3.0 3.4.2-1
ii python 2.7.3-4+deb7u1
ii python-brlapi 4.4-10+deb7u1
ii python-cairo 1.8.8-1+b2
ii python-dbus 1.1.1-1
ii python-gi 3.2.2-2
ii python-louis 2.4.1-1
ii python-pyatspi2 2.5.3+dfsg-3
ii python-speechd 0.7.1-6.2
ii python-support 1.0.15
ii python-xdg 0.19-5
ii speech-dispatcher 0.7.1-6.2
Versions of packages gnome-orca recommends:
ii gnome-mag 1:0.16.3-1
ii wget 1.13.4-3
ii xbrlapi 4.4-10+deb7u1
gnome-orca suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
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