Hi,
I was wondering about a secure X-Window System, that protects applications from harming each other just like memory protection does for processes. Are you aware of the fact that for example your word-processor could easily make screenshots of your web-browser, and send mouse events over to control that app.
The whole desktop is a trusted space, every application needs to be fully trusted, and could easily take over. This is especially dangerous when applications from remote locations are used via X-Forwarding, but it applies to local apps as well.
Applications could easily peek at other apps that display sensitive information like bank-accounts or passwords. Ok, I admit that they also access the same filesystem and are therefore not fully isolated either, and this problem has to be solved as well, however there are tools like chroot, selinux and systrace that take care of that, though they are not implemented for common desktop apps.
-Richard
Tags Development, Geek Documents