Enhancing X11 Application Security with LXC (2025)

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Comments (37)

mid-kid
For an article written late last year I hoped for a little more awareness of how massive a security hole granting full, unfiltered access to the X11 server is. Granted, any sandboxing is better than none, but firefox is one of the few apps that already sandboxes itself really well, and with a blog title like that it might be good to touch upon things like nested X servers such as Xephyr.
ChocolateGod
Correct me if I'm wrong, but passing through the X socket gives a giant sandbox escape as any application can control/see any other application, including a root terminal in a GUI app.
sedatk
Putting apps in a container sounds like a great idea until you need to access your files.
waynecochran
I wish I lived in a world were you didn't have to sign contracts, lock your doors, or have X11 security. It is so fun to run xmeltdown a new user's display.
ElijahLynn
Is X11 going to be like IE6. Still around in another 10 years after it was intended to be deprecated across all major distros (2025/2026).
anon
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LtWorf
Or one could just use firejail, which comes with a number of pre made profiles for common applications.
sunshine-o
This is a great article.I have little experience with lxc but I guess waypipe could be an option too.
calvinmorrison
Xlibre (the only current actively developed implementation of a X11 server) has a new extension - XNamespace to address some challenges as well.https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/blob/master/doc/Xnamespa...