Hello Les,
On Mon, 2010-11-29 at 12:35 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
If you don't trust your software, run it under a uid that doesn't have write access to anything important - or in a VM or a different machine for that matter. X has no problem displaying programs running with different uids or locations.
Using a "safe uid" will not stop a buffer overflow from happening and causing a privilege escalation if such an issue exists in the software. SELinux will negate most of the damage by disallowing even the escalated process access to resources it shouldn't touch.
With the ever increasing complexity of software is there any software you trust? I know I don't. Are you running your Flash plugin in Mozilla as a different user than the one you logged into under X? Care to elaborate how to accomplish such a feat? Or can you provide any pointers?
Regards, Leonard.