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On 09/01/14 20:25, Bill Spitzak wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:52CEF796.7090704@gmail.com" type="cite">Screenshot
applications I have seen are triggered by a key, yes, but all of
them then show the initial screenshot to the user and then allow
the user to change parameters and make a second screenshot. I
suppose restricting the ui so that the user must hit the same key
to trigger a second screenshot may work, but I am very worried
about any scheme that forces ui decisions on clients.
<br>
</blockquote>
I fully agree with this. Usable and intuitive UI design is hard
enough already without artificial limitations and requirements
coming from the compositor ;).<br>
<br>
Martin Peres wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">The video capture API concerns me more.<br>
</blockquote>
I realize that many people will never use it, so I think it's okay
to have it disabled by default and require that the user explicitly
enables it (once!). But just because something <i>can</i> be abused
doesn't mean it should be banned completely.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">However, I don't like the idea of having to
audit the policy on every wayland computer I will be on especially
since I'm pretty sure some devs won't mind if their application is
a privacy killer.</blockquote>
Uhm, you have to do that anyway. If you are using someone elses
computer, you have already given up your security. This person may
have recompiled his Wayland compositor. He may have added code to
the Wayland compositor that captures every keystroke and emails it
to him. He could even have installed a hardware keylogger in the
keyboard you're going to use. If you don't trust the owner of a
computer, you shouldn't use it for anything important, it's that
simple.<br>
<br>
You can't seriously expect every single Wayland user in the world to
comply with your security requirements just in case you may have to
use their computer once, right? Because that's effectively what you
are doing if you ban every possible protocol that could potentially
be abused ...<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 09/01/14 20:52, Martin Peres wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:52CEFDFE.7050906@free.fr" type="cite">Yes,
X11-style screenshot apps won't work but this is for a good
reason, isn't it? And as far as I know, most users on Windows do
not use any application for screenshots, they just press "print
screen" and paste that in paint/whatever. <br>
</blockquote>
'Most users' is not good enough. A core system component like
Wayland should aim to support the needs of as many users as
possible, not just 'most users' ;). If you compare Windows and
Linux, Linux is clearly good enough (or better) for 'most tasks'.
And look where that got us ...<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">With my proposed solution, the app would
only be used to edit the screenshot (crop, resize). Different hot
keys would be used depending on if you want to grab a window, a
screen or all the screens. Is that that difficult onto users? Any
other solution will result in lost confidentiality and, please,
let wayland compositors be the only ones that cannot be spied on
easily!
<br>
[...]<br>
Users do not think them as being different because that's what
they learnt. Should we keep on doing the same mistakes and carry
than legacy thinking? Should we loose confidentiality just for the
fringe amount of users who want a common GUI for screenshooters
across all wayland compositors? You know my answer...
<br>
</blockquote>
Your requirements are too strict for many users. And whether you
like it or not, the result will be that users disable these security
features if they stop them from doing something. If Wayland lacks
the ability to disable security features, some user will add them.
If the patches are rejected upstream, there will be downstream
patches or Wayland forks that do! I'm not saying that this is a good
thing, I'm saying that it is unavoidable. This is an open-source
project, it is impossible to ban a feature that users want.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Clients should never be trusted. I trust the
server because it is the one implementing the service, but that's
it.
</blockquote>
You have to trust some clients. You can't do online banking without
trusting the browser. You can't use PGP without trusting the gnupg
binary (or some equivalent). The 'clients should not be trusted'
model is just not realistic.<br>
<br>
And yes, your trust in the browser is totally misplaced because it
is trivial to compromise it. That's why I said that we need SELinux
or cgroups to create some sandboxing mechanism, before we can even
start to think about details like screenshots.<br>
<br>
Maarten Baert<br>
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