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  • Martin Flöser's avatar
    [server] Minimum supported idle timeout is 5 sec · 7a34e3be
    Martin Flöser authored
    A system isn't idle by definition below 5 sec. Before it's not possible
    to properly determine whether the user is still interacting with the
    system or not. Thus such a short timeout is not sufficient to determine
    whether the system is idle.
    
    Furthermore allowing short timeouts like 1 msec can be used to gather
    information from the system. It would allow to reconstruct the timestamp
    changes on the seat very reliable, which we do not want a Client to know.
    
    And also this can be used to get events on each key press and key release
    and the time between each of the events. This can be used to gather
    statistics which would in worst case allow to reconstruct what the user
    is typing. Determining where a word starts and ends should be relatively
    straight forward if you know the timing. With the length of the word and
    the statistics of alphabetic distribution it becomes possible to
    reconstruct some words. And also individual letters. With enough
    statistic and some known words one can determine how long it takes to
    press a certain letter. At that point the idle interface would be a
    keylogger.
    
    To prevent such attacks the timestamp is now modified to be at least
    5 sec. Why 5 sec? Because it's the smallest timestamp used in the
    KIdleTime example application which I do not want to break.
    5 sec are long enough to destroy this possible attack.
    
    REVIEW: 126220
    7a34e3be