Security hole in console driver?

Mike A. Harris (mharris@ican.net)
Sat, 16 Jan 1999 16:30:58 -0500 (EST)

I just closed down an X session on tty9 that was started from
tty6. After X closed down, I switched back to tty9 and what I
found was the output of some commands I typed 2 days ago on tty2.

Even if I were logged out on all consoles on my machine, someone
walking by could ALT-Fkey to tty9 and see private information.

It might also be possible for them to gain more information
through scrollback, etc...

I don't know how much of a security concern this is, but I've
seen stuff on tty9 after running X several times and had no idea
what it was. Now I know that somehow, the contents of another
tty are ending up on that tty.

Suggestions/comments?

--
Mike A. Harris  -  Computer Consultant  -  Linux advocate


Linux software galore:  http://freshmeat.net




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