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Re: recent gpm DoS issue



On Thu, Jul 27, 2000 at 11:56:03PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> pam_group is only relativly secure if your system is installed and
> configured a certain way:

Yup, some of that is mentioned in the documentation... nevertheless, it
would be a big improvement over making the socket world-writable.

Red Hat are using a pam_console module for this, here is an excerpt from
their advisory:

"For 6.x, the /dev/gpmctl ownership issue was addressed via the
pam_console helper mechanism.  This pam module makes devices  
which need to be accessible via console users owned by them and
no one else."


> what is gpmctl actually used for anyway?

I don't know exactly!  ;)  But here's what the gpm man page says:

       /dev/gpmctl     A control socket for clients

And the file only exists while gpm is running (it's removed when you
stop gpm) so I am guessing it is the socket through which clients read
mouse data.



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