The X-Windows Disaster

Why xhost is bad:
If you xhost +machine you are allowing any user on machine complete access to your X display.

That means remote users can do lots of nasty things like:


xhost + is even worse.
Better: xauth
Xauth requires the account on the remote machine to know a secret quantity for your display called an MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1. If the remote user knows this quantity it can have complete access to the local display.

Xauth Implementation

ACM@UIUC Main Page