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The default for the X server was for a long time that everybody on the internet could connect. From today's perspective a bizar situation. Back then, when you l
by phicoh 5y ago
The default for the X server was for a long time that everybody on the internet could connect. From today's perspective a bizar situation. Back then, when you logged in on an another computer, you only had to forward the DISPLAY envirnoment variable and applications on the remote host could connect to your local display. Handy, but very insecure.
- mgerdts 5y agoI think that by 1996 this was no longer the case. However, people that were used to being able to forward displays would commonly use "xhost +" (likely in .profile or similar) to disable these access restrictions. That also meant you could do things like: DISPLAY=otherhost:0.0 xwd -root - | xwud - to take a picture of someone else's screen and display it on your own. I may have the syntax a bit wrong - it's been a couple decades. ;)
- cbm-vic-20 5y agoIn the early Web days, there were some sites that would let you display an application locally (not just on a local network, like a lot of institutional X applications, but across the internet) if you gave it the proper DISPLAY value (and did the right xhost command locally). We're getting closer to getting full-circle on this, but much better security this time around.