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Moblin Will Run X Server As Logged-In User, Not Root
nerdyH writes "An architect of the Moblin Project has announced that Moblin 2.0 for netbooks and nettops is the first Linux distribution to run the X server as the logged-in user, rather than SUID'd to root. The fix to this decades-old security liability comes thanks to 'NRX' (No-root X) technology reportedly developed by Intel, Red Hat, and others in the X community, and the Moblin-sponsored 'Secure X' project. Besides making Linux netbooks a lot more snoop-proof, it seems like this could lead to an X-hosting renaissance of sorts, since you wouldn't be risking the whole system just to open up a specific user's account to remote X servers."
Long standing security issues with Linux? I thought the Lunix fanbois told me that it was the most secure OS of all time and yet they lied to me about something as dangerous as this bug? I guess I'll go back to my "insecure" Windows XP box that doesn't run the windowing system as the root user.
How is this backwards?
It's only backwards in human thought
In other words, it's not backwards at all, and anyone who "thinks" it is is simply wrong.
Yes, it's one of the things that happens when you elect an OpenBSD developer (Matthieu Herrb, who prototyped this two years ago) to the X.org steering committee. Thank $DEITY it's not just Linux developers working on X.org.
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