A bibliography of windowing systems and security
Jeremy Epstein · 1993
Version 1.05 Over the past several years there has been an increasing interest in windowing systems and security. Most of this interest has been in security aspects of the X Window System1, while there has been some work in policy issues for windowing and in windowing systems other than X. Because X is a network protocol, it is susceptible to many types of attack foreign to other windowing systems. Additionally, X was designed without concern for security: the X designers frequently state that X provides (graphical) “mechanism without policy”, but in the area of security, X provides “policy without mechanism.” Much of the interest in security has come from the government community, in particularly in the form of Compartmented Mode Workstations (CMWs). The commercial world is increasingly sensitive to issues of authentication in X, and to a lesser extent issues of audit and access control to X resources. This bibliography lists articles and publications addressing both government and commercial security concerns. The author welcomes additions and corrections to this list at any of the addresses listed above. 2 ∗ This paper was originally published in The X Resource, 4(1), 103–108, 1992. 1 X Window System is a trademark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.